Perform package installs in a single transaction rather than using a loop

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. Not really. In my environment, during the package pre-install phase, I had some packages succeed and some fail with SSL errors. That brought my attention to the fact the packages were installing as separate transactions, although I don't think that it's necessarily the reason for my failure.

Describe the solution you'd like Currently when installing packages, the package module is being used along with a with_items loop. This causes the package module to install each package one at a time. If the list of packages was instead passed as direct input to the name parameter, then the packages would be installed in a single transaction. That would likely be a bit faster and perhaps more reliable.

Refer to https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/24581 for some discussion.

Describe alternatives you've considered None. This seems to be the preferred approach.

Additional context Example of current output:

TASK [viya-ark.preinstall : Ensures required packages are present] *************
changed: [10.11.12.13] => (item=numactl) => {"ansible_loop_var": "item", "changed": true, "item": "numactl", "msg": "", "rc": 0, "results": ["Installed: numactl-2.0.12-13.el8.x86_64"]}
changed: [10.11.12.13] => (item=libXp.x86_64) => {"ansible_loop_var": "item", "changed": true, "item": "libXp.x86_64", "msg": "", "rc": 0, "results": ["Installed: libXp-1.0.3-3.el8.x86_64"]}
ok: [10.11.12.13] => (item=libXext) => {"ansible_loop_var": "item", "changed": false, "item": "libXext", "msg": "Nothing to do", "rc": 0, "results": []}
changed: [10.11.12.13] => (item=libXmu) => {"ansible_loop_var": "item", "changed": true, "item": "libXmu", "msg": "", "rc": 0, "results": ["Installed: libICE-1.0.9-15.el8.x86_64", "Installed: libXmu-1.1.3-1.el8.x86_64", "Installed: libSM-1.2.3-1.el8.x86_64", "Installed: libXt-1.1.5-12.el8.x86_64"]}
changed: [10.11.12.13] => (item=libXtst) => {"ansible_loop_var": "item", "changed": true, "item": "libXtst", "msg": "", "rc": 0, "results": ["Installed: libXi-1.7.10-1.el8.x86_64", "Installed: libXtst-1.2.3-7.el8.x86_64"]}
changed: [10.11.12.13] => (item=xterm) => {"ansible_loop_var": "item", "changed": true, "item": "xterm", "msg": "", "rc": 0, "results": ["Installed: pkgconf-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64", "Installed: pkgconf-m4-1.4.2-1.el8.noarch", "Installed: pkgconf-pkg-config-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64", "Installed: libfontenc-1.1.3-8.el8.x86_64", "Installed: xorg-x11-fonts-misc-7.5-19.el8.noarch", "Installed: libXpm-3.5.12-9.el8_7.x86_64", "Installed: libXft-2.3.3-1.el8.x86_64", "Installed: xorg-x11-font-utils-1:7.5-41.el8.x86_64", "Installed: libXaw-1.0.13-10.el8.x86_64", "Installed: libpkgconf-1.4.2-1.el8.x86_64", "Installed: xterm-331-1.el8_3.2.x86_64", "Installed: xterm-resize-331-1.el8_3.2.x86_64"]}
changed: [10.11.12.13] => (item=net-tools) => {"ansible_loop_var": "item", "changed": true, "item": "net-tools", "msg": "", "rc": 0, "results": ["Installed: net-tools-2.0-0.52.20160912git.el8.x86_64"]}

There should instead be a single "changed" line.

sassoftware / viya-ark

Perform package installs in a single transaction rather than using a loop #102