The ansible provisioner 'raw_arguments' option does not support white spaces

[gildegoma]

Vagrant version

From version 1.3.0 to 1.8.6

Vagrantfile snippet

config.vm.provision "demotest1", type: "ansible" do |ansible|                                                                                      
    ansible.playbook = "demo.yml"                                                                                                           
    ansible.raw_arguments = ["-e '@my_variables.json'", "-u my_user", "-t my_tag"]                                                                                                    
end

Observed behaviour

The given raw_arguments are not effective.

Expected behavior

The Ansible provisioner should pass the raw_arguments value in the format supported by https://github.com/enkessler/childprocess library used under the hood to execute the ansible-playbook command from the host.

or

The documentation should be fixed, to better explain which formats are expected for the values in the raw_arguments array.

Steps to reproduce

1. Use blank characters as separator in raw_arguments values. For instance: ['-t frontend,backend']
2. run the ansible provisioner (e.g. vagant provision)

Workaround

Define raw_arguments values without any space, or split the argument and its value.

Examples:

• ['--tags=frontend,backend']
• ['-t', 'frontend,backend']
• ['--tfrontend,backend']

References

• https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vagrant-up/FxWSbUWYr-A/HCr6UvpzXREJ
• https://groups.google.com/d/msg/vagrant-up/LJ5Jnm5fsqk/OZDCILGzAQAJ
• https://gist.github.com/phantomwhale/9657134
• Support more Ansible options #1697

Notes

This problem only affects the ansible provisioner. The ansible_local provisioner is not affected since the generated ansible-playbook command is formatted as a string, and remotely executed over SSH.

[gildegoma]

Resolving as a documentation bug, see 35f7c2c. I don't think it is worth the effort to try to add support for whitespace characters in this case.

[ghost]

I'm going to lock this issue because it has been closed for 30 days ⏳. This helps our maintainers find and focus on the active issues.

If you have found a problem that seems similar to this, please open a new issue and complete the issue template so we can capture all the details necessary to investigate further.