Modules

Modules are the main building blocks of Ansible playbooks. Although we do not generally speak of “module plugins”, a module is a type of plugin. For a developer-focused description of the differences between modules and other plugins, see Modules and plugins: what is the difference?.

Enabling modules

You can enable a custom module by dropping it into one of these locations:

• any directory added to the ANSIBLE_LIBRARY environment variable ($ANSIBLE_LIBRARY takes a colon-separated list like $PATH)

• ~/.ansible/plugins/modules/

• /usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules/

For more information on using local custom modules, see Adding a module or plugin outside of a collection.

Using modules

For information on using modules in ad hoc tasks, see Introduction to ad hoc commands. For information on using modules in playbooks, see Ansible playbooks.

See also

Ansible playbooks

An introduction to playbooks

Developing modules

An introduction to creating Ansible modules

Developing collections

A guide to creating Ansible collections

Communication

Got questions? Need help? Want to share your ideas? Visit the Ansible communication guide