Ansible offers two ways to reuse files and roles in a playbook: dynamic and static.

• For reuse, add an include_* task in the tasks section of a play:

  • include_role
  • include_tasks
  • include_vars

• For static reuse, add an import_* task in the tasks section of a play:

  • import_role
  • import_tasks

Task include and import statements can be used at arbitrary depth.

You can still use the bare roles keyword at the play level to incorporate a role in a playbook statically. However, the bare include keyword, once used for both task files and playbook-level includes, is now deprecated.

It's about turning a dedicated "Thin Client" box into a general purpose computer that can then be tailored to meet your own needs. To this end we need to be able to get them to run a version of Linux that we have complete control over. Depending on the make and model of the hardware this can be a trivial or not so trivial task.