Ansible Var Lens

See the effective value of every Ansible variable, per host.

In any non-trivial Ansible repo, the daily question is "what is the final value of this variable for host X?" — and the answer is buried under the precedence rules of group_vars/all, group_vars/<group>, host_vars/<host>, inventory [group:vars] and inline host vars. Ansible Var Lens answers it inside VS Code.

Features

• Inventory explorer — activity-bar view with groups and hosts (INI and YAML inventories, multiple files, [group:children], host ranges tolerated).

• Effective variables per host — click a host to open a YAML document with every variable merged with Ansible's precedence, each one annotated with the file it comes from and the files it overrides:

  # from: host_vars/web-01/override.yml
  #   overrides: group_vars/all/base.yml
  #   overrides: group_vars/web/main.yml
  timeout: 90
  

• {{ variable }} hovers — pick a host (status bar), then hover any {{ var }} in playbooks/templates to see its resolved value for that host and where it was defined.

• Compare two hosts — right-click a host ▸ Compare Effective Variables Between Hosts (or run the command) to open a document with only the variables that differ — changed / only-in-A / only-in-B, each with its provenance.

• Vault-aware — fully vault-encrypted files are skipped and reported; inline !vault scalars show as <vaulted>.

• Zero setup — reads ansible.cfg (inventory = ...) or auto-detects ./inventory, ./hosts; group_vars/host_vars as single files or directories, next to the repo root or the inventory.

Merge order modeled

Lowest → highest precedence (Ansible's inventory layer, hash_behaviour=replace):

1. inventory [group:vars] (parents before children)
2. group_vars/all
3. group_vars/<group> (parents before children, alphabetical within the same depth)
4. inline inventory host vars (ansible_host=…)
5. host_vars/<host>

Role defaults/vars and play vars are out of scope: they belong to plays, not to the inventory layer this extension models.

Settings

Documentation

• 📖 User Guide — setup, usage, effective vars, hover, vault, troubleshooting
• 🎬 Demo script — storyboard della demo video (5 min)
• 🤝 Contributing — dev setup, TDD, convenzioni commit/release, PR
• 🧩 RFC: Plugin API — design per resolver/transformer custom
• 🗺️ Backlog & roadmap — milestone e item AVL-n

Indice completo in docs/README.md.

Development

Setup (TDD enforced locally)

./docs/scripts/setup-dev-environment.sh

This installs npm packages and git pre-commit hook that enforces TDD: tests must pass before commit.

Development workflow

npm test             # run all unit tests (must pass before commit)
npm run build        # bundle to dist/ (after tests pass)
npx tsc --noEmit     # type check
# F5 in VS Code launches the Extension Development Host

The core (inventory parser + resolver) is dependency-free of the VS Code API and lives in src/core/ — that's what the tests cover. Optional smoke test against a real repo:

AVL_SMOKE_REPO=/path/to/your/ansible/repo npm test

Release & Publishing

Backlog & Milestones

Roadmap in docs/backlog.md (sorgente unica per milestones + feature planning).

Create a release (automated)

./docs/scripts/new-release.sh minor    # bumps version, commits, and tags automatically
# (Edits CHANGELOG.md in your editor — fill in details)

# Then just push:
git push origin main --follow-tags

That's it! GitHub Actions automatically:

• ✅ Runs tests + type check + build
• 📦 Creates .vsix → GitHub Releases
• 🚀 Publishes to VS Code Marketplace (if VSCE_PAT secret configured)

License

MIT