noobient.file_changed

Synopsys

This role lets you detect changes in files between operations, so that you can indicate changes if, and only if, the file actually changed. This is useful when you do ad-hoc commands (command, shell, etc.) that cannot indicate if changes have been made or not.

Parameters

Name	Required	Example	Description
path	yes	/etc/acme/foobar.com/foobar.com.cer	File to check changes on.
mode	yes	before	Indicate whether the check is before or after the command(s). Possible values are before and after. If before, it calculates the checksum, if after, it checks the current checksum with the one calculated during the before run, and indicates the change if they differ.
verbose	no	true	If true, print more diagnostic messages. Defaults to false.

Examples

- include_role:
    name: noobient.file_changed
  vars:
    path: /etc/acme/foobar.com/foobar.com.cer
    mode: before

- name: Do stuff on file
  command:
    cmd: /opt/acme.sh --install-cert -d foobar.com --cert-file /etc/acme/foobar.com/foobar.com.cer
  changed_when: false

- include_role:
    name: noobient.file_changed
  vars:
    path: /etc/foo.conf
    mode: after
    verbose: true

Return Values

Key	Type	Example	Description
file_changed.changed	boolean	true	Indicates whether the file changed between the before and after runs. In before mode, it's always false.

Support

Platform	Support	Status
Linter	✅
AlmaLinux 8	✅
AlmaLinux 9	✅
Fedora 40	✅
Fedora 41	✅
Ubuntu 20.04	✅
Ubuntu 22.04	✅
Ubuntu 24.04	✅