Feature: Ansible Testing with Molecule and Linting

[ansibleguy]

Greetings!

Semaphore could use an integration for Ansible-based test-suites like:

• Ansible Molecule (Role-based testing)
• Ansible Lint
• YAML Lint
• PyLint
• ...

Why?

Such test-suites are used to build and maintain a healthy Ansible configuration (Playbooks, Roles, Tasks, Modules, Vars, ...). In my eyes this functionality would enhance Semaphore as it lowers the dependency on other CI/CD platforms. A scheduled execution of Ansible-Molecule tests would very nice to have.

How?

These are some ideas I had: (might be flawed and have much potential for improvements)

Basically:

• Users should be able to link tests to task-templates for them to run before every execution
• Users should be able to schedule tests via cron

From the frontend perspective:

• Adding another menu point for 'Tests'
• Being able to add a test
  • name, type (molecule/lint), cron
  • if scheduled
  • link to repository - as we need this information to run the test
  • those tests should not be link-able to task-templates
  • if type = lint
  • config-file (optional)
  • linter dropdown (pylint, yamllint, ansible-lint, other)
  • if linter = other - allow to specify 'linter_executable'
  • if type = molecule
  • role-to-test (optional)
• Being able to link one or multiple tests to a task-template

From the backend perspective:

• Database schema for the tests
• possible adjustments to service/schedules needed for ability to work with tests
• create lib/AnsibleMolecule.go to handle execution of molecule
  • if test is not filtered to one role - iterate over every role found in ANSIBLE_ROLES_PATH and run test if 'molecule' directory exists
• create lib/Lint.go to handle execution of lint-tests
  • use pre-defined executable or provided one if 'other'
• create api/tests.go for CRUD actions from frontend

When to run?

1. Before task execution

   Prepare repository (clone if needed) => run tests => execute

   Especially for linting tests, that don't take a lot of time to finish, it makes sense to execute them before executing a 'task'.

2. Scheduled

   Tests for Molecule easily take 5+ minutes to finish. Most people would not want to run these test before every 'task' execution as the overhead is too much. Especially for Molecule tests it would be good to be able to schedule them using cron.

Contribution

I could give the backend implementation(s) a try - after the basics are defined.

[ansibleguy]

Addition: Molecule cleanup should also be handled by lib/AnsibleMolecule.go Example written in bash that should be executed before every test:

function cleanup {
  if [ -d "$PATH_TEST_FULL" ]
  then
    if [[ "$status" != "PASSED" ]]
    then
      cd "$PATH_TEST_FULL"
      molecule destroy
    fi
    cd /tmp
    rm -rf "$PATH_TEST_FULL"
  fi
  rm -rf "$HOME/.cache/molecule/$ROLE"
  if [ -d "$HOME/.cache/ansible-compat" ]
  then
    find "$HOME/.cache/ansible-compat" -maxdepth 0 -type d -mmin +30 -exec rm -rf {} \;
  fi
}

Note: mmin +30 => 30min could be not enough time for some tests to finish Reference to a full bash-script: molecule.sh.j2