My very simple attempt at keeping PostgreSQL up-to-date on FreeBSD machines.

Installing PostgreSQL on FreeBSD via Ansible

I’m slowly moving to Ansible to manage my machines, and one problem I’m trying to solve at best is how to keep PostgreSQL up-to-date.
In the case of FreeBSD machines, pkgng is the module to use, but in the past I was used to this very simple playbook snippet: 

- name: PostgreSQL 11
  become: yes
  with_items:
    - server
    - contrib
    - client
    - plperl
  pkgng:
    name: postgresql11-{{ item }}
    state: latest
However, there is a very scarign warning message when running the above: 
TASK [PostgreSQL 11] 
[DEPRECATION WARNING]: Invoking "pkgng" only once while using a loop via squash_actions is deprecated. Instead of using a loop to supply multiple 
items and specifying `name: "postgresql11-"`, please use `name: ['server', 'contrib', 'client', 'plperl']` and remove the loop. This 
feature will be removed in version 2.11. Deprecation warnings can be disabled by setting deprecation_warnings=False in ansible.cfg.
That’s easy to fix, but also annoying (at least to me), because I have to change the above snippet to the following one: 
- name: PostgreSQL 11
  become: yes
  pkgng:
    name:
      - postgresql11-server
      - postgresql11-contrib
      - postgresql11-client
      - postgresql11-plperl
    state: latest
So far, the better solution I’ve found that helps me keep readibility is to use a variable to hold the PostgreSQL version I want and the list of packages I need: 

vars:
  pg_version: 11
  pg_components:
    - postgresql{{ pg_version }}-server
    - postgresql{{ pg_version }}-contrib
    - postgresql{{ pg_version }}-client
    - postgresql{{ pg_version }}-plperl


tasks:
    - name: PostgreSQL {{ pg_version }}
      become: yes
      pkgng:
        name: "{{ pg_components }}"
        state: latest

The article Installing PostgreSQL on FreeBSD via Ansible has been posted by Luca Ferrari on October 30, 2019

Tags: postgresql , freebsd , ansible , planet-postgresql-org