Deprecation notice

This extension has been deprecated in favor of Ansible extension published by Red Hat.

For more details please see this discussion.

Let me know in the comments if this extension has helped you ;)

Migration guide

1. Uninstall this extension
2. Reload VS Code (from Command Palette or using button visible in the Extensions pane next to this extension)
3. Install the extension published by Red Hat
4. Adjust extension configuration:
   • The default setting for Ansible: Use Fully Qualified Collection Names changed to true. If you haven't set it explicitly to false and you'd like to retain the old behavior, you'll need to set it to false.

     NOTE: Official recommendation (in Ansible documentation) is to use FQCNs.

   • The following settings are no longer available in the User scope, you will need to move them to one of the other scopes:
     • Ansible: Path
     • Ansible Lint: Path
     • Python: Activation Script
     • Python: Interpreter Path
5. Adjust files.associations if some of your YAML files get incorrectly associated with Ansible. And vice versa — some of the Ansible content may end up being automatically picked up by another YAML extension, in which case you will be surprised by seeing unexpected highlighting in those documents.

Ansible VS Code Extension

This extension adds language support for Ansible to VS Code.

Features

Syntax highlighting

Ansible keywords, module names and module options, as well as standard YAML elements are recognized and highlighted distinctly. Jinja expressions are supported too, also those in Ansible conditionals (when, failed_when, changed_when, check_mode), which are not placed in double curly braces.

The screenshots and animations presented in this README have been taken using the One Dark Pro theme. The default VS Code theme will not show the syntax elements as distinctly, unless customized. Virtually any theme other than default will do better.

Validation

While you type, the syntax of your Ansible scripts is verified and any feedback is provided instantaneously.

Integration with ansible-lint

On opening and saving a document, ansible-lint is executed in the background and any findings are presented as errors. You might find it useful that rules/tags added to warn_list (see Ansible Lint Documentation) are shown as warnings instead.

If you also install yamllint, ansible-lint will detect it and incorporate into the linting process. Any findings reported by yamllint will be exposed in VSCode as errors/warnings.

Smart autocompletion

The extension tries to detect whether the cursor is on a play, block or task etc. and provides suggestions accordingly. There are also a few other rules that improve user experience:

• the name property is always suggested first
• on module options, the required properties are shown first, and aliases are shown last, otherwise ordering from the documentation is preserved
• FQCNs (fully qualified collection names) are inserted only when necessary; collections configured with the collections keyword are honored. This behavior can be disabled in extension settings.

Auto-closing Jinja expressions

When writing a Jinja expression, you only need to type "{{ , and it will be mirrored behind the cursor (including the space). You can also select the whole expression and press space to put spaces on both sides of the expression.

Documentation reference

Documentation is available on hover for Ansible keywords, modules and module options. The extension works on the same principle as ansible-doc, providing the documentation straight from the Python implementation of the modules.

Jump to module code

You may also open the implementation of any module using the standard Go to Definition operation, for instance, by clicking on the module name while holding ctrl/cmd.

Requirements

• Ansible 2.9+
• Ansible Lint (required, unless you disable linter support)
• yamllint (optional)

For Windows users, this extension works perfectly well with extensions such as Remote - WSL and Remote - Containers.

If you have any other extension providing language support for Ansible, you might need to uninstall it first.

Configuration

This extension supports multi-root workspaces, and as such, can be configured on any level (User, Remote, Workspace and/or Folder).

• ansible.ansible.path: Path to the ansible executable.
• ansible.ansible.useFullyQualifiedCollectionNames: Toggles use of fully qualified collection names (FQCN) when inserting a module name. Disabling it will only use FQCNs when necessary, that is when the collection isn't configured for the task.
• ansible.ansibleLint.enabled: Enables/disables use of ansible-lint.
• ansible.ansibleLint.path: Path to the ansible-lint executable.
• ansible.ansibleLint.arguments: Optional command line arguments to be appended to ansible-lint invocation. See ansible-lint documentation.
• ansible.python.interpreterPath: Path to the python/python3 executable. This setting may be used to make the extension work with ansible and ansible-lint installations in a Python virtual environment.
• ansible.python.activationScript: Path to a custom activate script, which will be used instead of the setting above to run in a Python virtual environment.

Known limitations

• The shorthand syntax for module options (key=value pairs) is not supported.
• Only Jinja expressions inside Ansible YAML files are supported. In order to have syntax highlighting of Jinja template files, you'll need to install other extension.
• Jinja blocks (inside Ansible YAML files) are not supported yet.