Molecule

Updated: September 28, 2024

Molecule is essentially a plugin for ansible used to test playbooks and roles.

Table of Contents

Commands

  -d, --driver-name [delegated]           # Name of driver to initialize. (delegated)
  -r, --role-name TEXT                    # Name of the role to create.
  --dependency-name [galaxy]              # Name of dependency to initialize. (galaxy)
  --lint-name [yamllint]                  # Name of lint to initialize. (ansible-lint)
  --provisioner-name [ansible]            # Name of provisioner to initialize. (ansible)
  --verifier-name [ansible|testinfra]     # Name of verifier to initialize. (ansible)


  --help                                  # Show this message and exit.

Usage

# create a new role with molecule
molecule init role acme.my_new_role --driver-name docker

# create molecule within a role that already exists
molecule init scenario -r role_name -d podman

Setup

Create a folder at

mkdir ~/python

In that folder install Python virtualenv for ubuntu or mac (brew)

sudo apt install python3-virtualenv
brew install virtualenv

Create moleculenv which makes a subdir with fresh install of python (inactive)

virtualenv molecule

Check which python is active

which python3

Activate virtual python env

source molecule/bin/activate

Deactivate virtual python env

deactivate

While active install packages

pip3 install "molecule[lint,ansible,podman]"