Ansible: properly copy local files within the target host

Ansible dosn’t have convenient way to copy files within target host. At least, I didn’t find any. Directly using cp command is not the best option. Files will be copied every time and task will always be marked as changed. Other downside is that check mode won’t work for command and shell modules.

To make this properly, you can use rsync command on target host with some hacks:

- set_fact:
    rsync_dry_run: "--dry-run"
  when: ansible_check_mode

- name: copy files within target host
  shell: rsync --itemize-changes --archive {{ rsync_dry_run | default('') }} /src/directory/ /dest/directory/
  # always run
  check_mode: no
  register: rsync_result
  changed_when: rsync_result.stdout != ''

Check mode will show, whether the task is to change files, and files won’t be copied if they already are in place.

--itemize-changes makes rsync output a change-summary for every updated file.

Other options thay you may want to use with rsync in this task:

• --update skip files that are never in destination
• --ignore-existing do not update files that exist in destination
• --checksum do not skip files based on mod-time and size, use checksum

Yep, ansible will brag about using synchronize module instead of rsync, but it can not work within destination host.

UPD: reddit user FireReadyAim pointed out, that copy module supports remote_src parameter. It was added in ansible 2.0, I’ve missed it. But it does not support recursion, so my solution is still useful in some cases.