ansible-tasks produced unnecessary empty item task

[pfuntner]

I worked up a fix (a090631) to include an empty task when there is no item that applies for any host but I see it creating an empty item task even when there is one non-empty task:

Task type  Role                 Task                                                        Item                                                                                        play                            Run ansible-role-clamav
task                            Gathering Facts                                                                                                                                         ok               ok                ok            ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Include OS-Specific variables                                                                                                                           ok               ok                ok            ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  include_tasks
task       ansible-role-clamav  Define clamav_daemon.                                                                                                                                   ok               ok                ok            ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Define clamav_freshclam_daemon.                                                                                                                         ok               ok                ok            ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Define clamav_packages.                                                                                                                                 ok               ok                ok            ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Ensure ClamAV packages are installed.                       epel-release                                                                                ok               failed            changed       ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Ensure ClamAV packages are installed.                       clamav                                                                                      changed          failed            changed       ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Ensure ClamAV packages are installed.                       clamav-update                                                                               ok               failed            ok            ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Ensure ClamAV packages are installed.                       clamav-scanner-systemd                                                                      failed           failed            changed       ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Ensure ClamAV packages are installed.                       clamav-base                                                                                                                                  ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Ensure ClamAV packages are installed.                       clamav-daemon                                                                                                                                ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Ensure ClamAV packages are installed.
task       ansible-role-clamav  Run freshclam after ClamAV packages change.                                                                                                                                                changed       ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  include_tasks [2]                                                                                                                                                                                        ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Ensure Freshclam service is available.                                                                                                                                                     changed       ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Reload systemd after adding service.                                                                                                                                                       ok            ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Change configuration for the ClamAV daemon.                 {u'regexp': u'^.*Example$', u'state': u'absent'}                                                                               changed       ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Change configuration for the ClamAV daemon.                 {u'regexp': u'^.*LocalSocket .*$', u'line': u'LocalSocket /var/run/clamav/clamd.ctl'}                                                        ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Change configuration for the ClamAV daemon.                 {u'regexp': u'^.*LocalSocket .*$', u'line': u'LocalSocket /var/run/clamd.scan/clamd.sock'}                                     changed       ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Change configuration for the ClamAV daemon.
task       ansible-role-clamav  Ensure ClamAV daemon is running (if configured).                                                                                                                                           changed       ...
task       ansible-role-clamav  Ensure ClamAV freshclam daemon is running (if configured).                                                                                                                                 changed       ...
handler    ansible-role-clamav  restart clamav daemon   

Here's the output from ansible-playbook I was parsing when this happened: stdout-fixed.txt

I tried to recreate this with ansible/no-items.yml but couldn't get it to happen:

[ubuntu@pfuntner-ubuntu ~]$ ansible-playbook -e '{"hosts": "aws-centos8,gcp-centos8", "items": ["foo", "bar"]}' ~/ansible/no-items.yml | grep -v 'gcp-centos8.*foo' | grep -v 'aws-centos8.*bar' | ansible-tasks
Task type  Role  Task                       Item  aws-centos8  gcp-centos8
play             Test a loop with no items
task             Gathering Facts                  ok           ok
task             Before                           ok           ok
task             Loop                       foo   ok
task             Loop                       bar                ok
task             After                            ok           ok
[ubuntu@pfuntner-ubuntu ~]$