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Ansible Academy · Lesson

defaults vs vars: The Override Order

Design clean role variable interfaces.

Two Variable Folders

A role can define variables in two places: defaults/main.yml and vars/main.yml. They look similar but behave very differently.

defaults Are Soft

Values in defaults/main.yml sit at the lowest precedence. They are gentle suggestions that almost anything else can override.

# defaults/main.yml
http_port: 80
workers: 4

All lessons in this course

  1. Role Dependencies in meta/main.yml
  2. defaults vs vars: The Override Order
  3. include_role & import_role at Runtime
  4. allow_duplicates & Role Idempotency
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