How To Clone A Git Repository With Ansible

Step by step guide to clone a git repository with ansible.

We will show you the simple method to clone a Git repo on the remote node with Ansible. Without any further explanation, let’s have a look into the process to clone a git repo with ansible.

How To Clone A Git Repository With Ansible

You must have Ansible installed on your local machine. if you haven’t installed Ansible on your computer then you easily install ansible with the following command. Ansible is normally found in the default repositories of Ubuntu.

sudo apt install ansible

Just in case If the repo is not available in your Ubuntu then you can run the following command to add an ansible repo:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ansible/ansible

Update the software repositories list:

sudo apt update

Now you can install Ansible using this command:

sudo apt install ansible

You can verify

You should verify the installation with the following command:

ansible --version

If you are using Linux other than Ubuntu/Debian like RedHat, CentOS, SUSE, etc then you can install ansible with the following command.

Install Ansible on CentOS, Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE etc

You should install EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) at first so that you can install the latest version on Ansible in CentOS, RedHat, SUSE, and Fedora  using the below command:

sudo yum install epel-release

Now install Ansible using this command:

sudo yum install ansible

You can check the Ansible version:

ansible --version

How To Set Up Ansible Inventory

You need to set up the Ansible inventory so that you can clone a git repository with ansible. Ansible inventory file is located in /etc/ansible/hosts.  You need to add the IP address of the remote host in this file to set up an Ansible inventory and save the file.

vim /etc/ansible/hosts 

Note: Create this file manually if it does not exist.

How To Create The Ansible Playbook To Clone A Git Repository

Create a YAML file with the following command using Vim editor

vim clonegit.yaml

Edit the file and add the following entries.

---
 - hosts: all
   tasks:
   - name: Clone A Github Repository With Ansible
     git:
       repo: https://github.com/sqlite/sqlite.git
       dest: /home/debian/repos/
       clone: yes
       update: yes

Now, run the playbook with the following command:

ansible-playbook clonegit.yaml

Now, You should have cloned a git repository in the specified directory.