no example of import_tasks or strategy

[unusualevent]

is it possible to make an example of import_tasks, and an example of strategy, and an example of them together?

I had an original problem with the code, but the docs and debugging tools and examples were unhelpful.

what I was trying to solve

wanted to set a strategy for tasks to free (like usual) but import a bunch of tasks into a main task in a role. maybe this is a bad pattern or that's supposed to be set inside the playbook itself (along with which tasks of a role to run... but then... why do roles have a main.yml??

the errors I had

ansible shows a conflicting action statement during a run of a playbook:

ERROR! conflicting action statements: strategy, import_tasks

the example in the docs for import_tasks doesn't tell you what yaml file the code is (a common problem throughout the docs) - I'm not sure if this is a playbook, a task, what have you: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/builtin/import_tasks_module.html

yaml-schema shows "matches a schema that is not allowed", but doesn't give the error

an example file

filename: roles/something/tasks/main.yml

- name: example
  strategy: free
  tasks:
     - import_tasks: subtask.yml # done because I couldn't set strategy in the other task. should I be setting this in the playbook?
# alternatively:
- name: example
  strategy: free
  import_tasks: subtask.yml # done because I couldn't set strategy in the other task. should I be setting this in the playbook?

the debug process

1. tried re-reading docs (it's been a while since I messed with playbooks and didn't have any old code) - this stuff is at least trying to have examples which is better than auto-generated docs for rust/golang/openapi3...
2. yaml schema barfed undescriptively
3. ansible-lint crashed (which, maybe it's useful?)
4. googling ansible schema pulls up https://github.com/ansible/schemas
5. ansible-schemas repo says ansible-lint maintains it
6. however ansible-lints docs (https://ansible-lint.readthedocs.io/rules/schema/) say the schema rules are maintained in ansible-navigator (https://github.com/ansible/ansible-navigator), all of which aren't solid examples...
7. which lead me to google and find this examples repo...
8. which doesn't cover either import_tasks or strategy
9. made ticket in ansible examples
10. re-read docs really hard. it's subtle but I thiiiink the ansible maintainers are trying to say "this file is a playbook".

conclusion

...maybe a longterm fix is to have the ansible docs website show what each code snippet is (playbook, task, etc)...

is it possible to make a correct example using both??

[BachenbergS]

I think your playbook is missing hosts:

have you tried:

- name: example
  strategy: free
  hosts: localhost
  tasks:
     - import_tasks: subtask.yml 

may have a look here import_tasks_module