Ansible Kitty

An Ansible role for managing a Kitty (https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty) installation.

Requirements

This role requires two separate tools be installed.

First it requires the ansible.utils collection be installed from Ansible-Galaxy via:

ansible-galaxy collection install ansible.utils

Secondly it requires the jsonschema Python package be installed via:

pip install jsonschema

Setup

Before the role can be used it needs to be added to the machine running the playbook, and as of writing this, this role is not hosted on Ansible-Galaxy only on Github.

1. Create a requirements.yml file in the root directory of the playbook being worked on.

2. Add the following definition inside the requirements.yml file:

- name: hth-kitty
  src: https://github.com/hrafnthor/ansible-kitty.git
  scm: git

3. Install the requirements by executing

ansible-galaxy install -r .requirements.yml

This will allow any playbook run from this machine to use the role hth-kitty

Variables

All parameters are optional unless otherwise stated.

kitty:
  remove:       [bool]    Indicates that every version, path addition and desktop entry should be removed.
  trim:         [bool]    Indicates that any versions that don't match either 'nightly' (if requested to be present) or the configured 'stable' version, should be removed. Defaults to false.
  default:
    remove:     [bool]    If true will remove the version from the path as well as removing any desktop entry that may exist.
    version:    [string]  [required] The version number to add to path. Can be any value but will fail if the subsequent directory matching this value is not found. Setting it to 'nightly' will attempt to link to the nightly version, while 'latest' will attempt to link to the latest version.
    desktop:              If present, and if [desktop.remove] is missing or false, will add a desktop client entry.
      remove:   [bool]    If true will remove any current desktop entry and not create a new one. Defaults to false.
      force:    [bool]    Indicates if a new desktop entry should be created if a prior one already exists. Icon paths and keywords will still be changed if needed.
      keywords: [array]   List of keywords to add to the desktop entry, making it searchable by them.
  releases:
    - version:  [string]  [required] The version code to install. Can be set to "latest" or "nightly" to install the relevant versions.
      checksum: [string]  Optional checksum for the archive.
      remove:   [boolean] Indicates if the version should be removed or not.

Default variables

hth_default_kitty_latest_version_url:

This is the url of the text document containing the latest version as published by the author of Kitty themselves. Is used if either variables [stable.version] or [default.version] are set to 'latest'.

Defaults to https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/current-version.txt.

hth_default_kitty_linux_installation_path:

This is the default extraction path for linux versions.

Defaults to /opt/kitty.

hth_default_kitty_linux_symlink_path:

This is the default path to which the requested default version of kitty will be symlinked to.

Defaults to /usr/bin.

hth_default_kitty_linux_desktop_entry_path:

This is the default path to where desktop entries will be created.

Defaults to /usr/share/applications.

hth_kitty_default_linux_desktop_entry_group:

This is the default owner of the symlink created to hth_default_kitty_linux_symlink_path.

Defaults to root.

hth_kitty_default_linux_symlink_path_group:

This is the default group owner of the symlink created to hth_default_kitty_linux_symlink_path.

Defaults to root.

hth_kitty_default_linux_installation_owner:

This is the default owner of the symlink created to hth_default_kitty_linux_installation_path.

Defaults to root.

hth_kitty_default_linux_installation_group:

This is the default group owner of the symlink created to hth_default_kitty_linux_installation_path.

Defaults to root.

hth_kitty_default_linux_desktop_entry_owner:

This is the default owner of the symlink created to hth_default_kitty_linux_desktop_entry_path.

Defaults to root.

hth_kitty_default_linux_desktop_entry_group:

This is the default group owner of the symlink created to hth_default_kitty_linux_desktop_entry_path.

Defaults to root.

hth_kitty_default_os_linux_architecture_map:

This is a mapping of supported Linux architectures and their associated Kitty artifacts.

If missing mappings, needs to be added just override this mapping and add the new map next to the present one. For example to add support for armv8 architecture override via:

hth_kitty_default_os_linux_architecture_map:
  x86_64: ["x86_64", "amd64"]
  arm64: ["the armv8 architecture you need supported"]

Defaults to x86_64: ["x86_64", "amd64"]

Example

The following example fetches the latest and nightly versions plus version 0.43.0, trims any other versions that might exist afterwards and adds the nightly version to the path as well as creating a desktop entry for kitty.

- hosts: all
  vars:
    kitty:
      trim: true
      releases:
        - version: "latest"
        - version: "nightly"
        - version: "0.43.0"
      default:
        version: nightly
        desktop:
          keywords:
            - nightly
  roles:
    - hth-kitty

License

Copyright 2025 Hrafn Thorvaldsson

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

   http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.