community.general.tasks_only callback – Only show tasks

Note

This callback plugin is part of the community.general collection (version 12.6.1).

You might already have this collection installed if you are using the ansible package. It is not included in ansible-core. To check whether it is installed, run ansible-galaxy collection list.

To install it, use: ansible-galaxy collection install community.general.

To use it in a playbook, specify: community.general.tasks_only.

New in community.general 11.1.0

Callback plugin
Synopsis
Parameters
Examples

Callback plugin

This plugin is a stdout callback. You can use only use one stdout callback at a time. Additional aggregate or notification callbacks can be enabled though. See Callback plugins for more information on callback plugins.

Synopsis

Removes play start and stats marker from ansible.builtin.default‘s output.
Can be used to generate output for documentation examples. For this, the number_of_columns option should be set to an explicit value.

Parameters

Parameter	Comments
check_mode_markers boolean added in Ansible 2.9	Toggle to control displaying markers when running in check mode. The markers are `DRY RUN` at the beginning and ending of playbook execution (when calling `ansible-playbook --check`) and `CHECK MODE` as a suffix at every play and task that is run in check mode. Choices: `false` ← (default) `true` Configuration: INI entry: [defaults] check_mode_markers = false Environment variable: `ANSIBLE_CHECK_MODE_MARKERS`
display_failed_stderr boolean added in Ansible 2.7	Toggle to control whether failed and unreachable tasks are displayed to STDERR rather than STDOUT. Choices: `false` ← (default) `true` Configuration: INI entry: [defaults] display_failed_stderr = false Environment variable: `ANSIBLE_DISPLAY_FAILED_STDERR`
display_ok_hosts boolean added in Ansible 2.7	Toggle to control displaying ‘ok’ task/host results in a task. Choices: `false` `true` ← (default) Configuration: INI entry: [defaults] display_ok_hosts = true Environment variable: `ANSIBLE_DISPLAY_OK_HOSTS`
display_skipped_hosts boolean	Toggle to control displaying skipped task/host results in a task. Choices: `false` `true` ← (default) Configuration: INI entry: [defaults] display_skipped_hosts = true Environment variable: `ANSIBLE_DISPLAY_SKIPPED_HOSTS`
number_of_columns integer	Sets the number of columns for Ansible’s display. Configuration: Environment variable: `ANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_TASKS_ONLY_NUMBER_OF_COLUMNS`
pretty_results boolean added in community.general 11.2.0	Configure the result format to be more readable. When `result_format` is set to `yaml` this option defaults to `true`, and defaults to `false` when configured to `json`. Setting this option to `true` will force `json` and `yaml` results to always be pretty printed regardless of verbosity. When set to `true` and used with the `yaml` result format, this option will modify module responses in an attempt to produce a more human friendly output at the expense of correctness, and should not be relied upon to aid in writing variable manipulations or conditionals. For correctness, set this option to `false` or set `result_format` to `json`. Choices: `false` `true` Configuration: INI entry: [defaults] callback_format_pretty = VALUE Environment variable: `ANSIBLE_CALLBACK_FORMAT_PRETTY`
result_format string added in community.general 11.2.0	Define the task result format used in the callback output. These formats do not cause the callback to emit valid JSON or YAML formats. The output contains these formats interspersed with other non-machine parsable data. Choices: `"json"` ← (default) `"yaml"` Configuration: INI entry: [defaults] callback_result_format = json Environment variable: `ANSIBLE_CALLBACK_RESULT_FORMAT`
result_indentation integer added in ansible-core 2.20	Allows to configure indentation for YAML and verbose/pretty JSON. Please note that for `result_format=yaml`, only values between 2 and 9 will be handled as expected by PyYAML. If indentation is set to 1, or to 10 or larger, the first level of indentation will be used, but all further indentations will be by 2 spaces. Default: `4` Configuration: INI entry: [defaults] callback_result_indentation = 4 Environment variable: `ANSIBLE_CALLBACK_RESULT_INDENTATION`
show_custom_stats boolean	This adds the custom stats set via the set_stats plugin to the play recap. Choices: `false` ← (default) `true` Configuration: INI entry: [defaults] show_custom_stats = false Environment variable: `ANSIBLE_SHOW_CUSTOM_STATS`
show_per_host_start boolean added in Ansible 2.9	This adds output that shows when a task starts to execute for each host. Choices: `false` ← (default) `true` Configuration: INI entry: [defaults] show_per_host_start = false Environment variable: `ANSIBLE_SHOW_PER_HOST_START`
show_task_path_on_failure boolean added in ansible-core 2.11	When a task fails, display the path to the file containing the failed task and the line number. This information is displayed automatically for every task when running with `-vv` or greater verbosity. Choices: `false` ← (default) `true` Configuration: INI entry: [defaults] show_task_path_on_failure = false Environment variable: `ANSIBLE_SHOW_TASK_PATH_ON_FAILURE`

Note

Configuration entries listed above for each entry type (Ansible variable, environment variable, and so on) have a low to high priority order. For example, a variable that is lower in the list will override a variable that is higher up. The entry types are also ordered by precedence from low to high priority order. For example, an ansible.cfg entry (further up in the list) is overwritten by an Ansible variable (further down in the list).

Examples

---
# Enable callback in ansible.cfg:
ansible_config: |-
  [defaults]
  stdout_callback = community.general.tasks_only

---
# Enable callback with environment variables:
environment_variable: |-
  ANSIBLE_STDOUT_CALLBACK=community.general.tasks_only

Authors

Felix Fontein (@felixfontein)

Collection links

© 2012–2018 Michael DeHaan
© 2018–2025 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/projects/ansible/latest/collections/community/general/tasks_only_callback.html