Validate Ansible Playbooks workflow (vinta/hal-9000)

The Validate Ansible Playbooks workflow from vinta/hal-9000, explained and optimized by Latchkey.

What it does

This is the Validate Ansible Playbooks workflow from the vinta/hal-9000 repository, a real project running GitHub Actions. It is shown here with attribution under its MIT license.

Below, Latchkey shows a faster, safer version produced by its optimization engine.

The workflow

name: Validate Ansible Playbooks

on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:

permissions:
  contents: read

concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.head_ref || github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true

jobs:
  ansible-lint:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          persist-credentials: false

      - name: Run ansible-lint
        uses: ansible/ansible-lint@v26.4.0

  ansible-syntax:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          persist-credentials: false

      - name: Setup Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          python-version: "3.x"

      - name: Install Ansible
        run: |
          python -m pip install --upgrade pip
          pip install ansible

      - name: Check Ansible playbook syntax
        run: |
          cd playbooks
          ansible-playbook site.yml --syntax-check

The same workflow, on Latchkey

Estimated ~20% faster on cache hits, plus fewer wasted runs and a safer supply chain. Added and changed lines are highlighted.

name: Validate Ansible Playbooks
 
on:
  push:
    branches: [main]
  pull_request:
 
permissions:
  contents: read
 
concurrency:
  group: ${{ github.workflow }}-${{ github.head_ref || github.ref }}
  cancel-in-progress: true
 
jobs:
  ansible-lint:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          persist-credentials: false
 
      - name: Run ansible-lint
        uses: ansible/ansible-lint@v26.4.0
 
  ansible-syntax:
    timeout-minutes: 30
    runs-on: latchkey-small
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          persist-credentials: false
 
      - name: Setup Python
        uses: actions/setup-python@v5
        with:
          cache: 'pip'
          python-version: "3.x"
 
      - name: Install Ansible
        run: |
          python -m pip install --upgrade pip
          pip install ansible
 
      - name: Check Ansible playbook syntax
        run: |
          cd playbooks
          ansible-playbook site.yml --syntax-check
 

What changed

• Run on Latchkey managed runners with one line (runs-on), which apply the fixes below automatically and self-heal transient failures. This example uses latchkey-small; pick the runner size that fits the job.
• Cache dependency installs on the setup step so they are served from cache.
• Add a job timeout so a hung step cannot burn hours of runner time.

1 third-party action is referenced by a movable tag. Pin it to the commit SHA (Latchkey resolves and applies this automatically) so a repointed tag cannot change what runs.

What Latchkey heals here

This workflow has steps that commonly fail on transient issues (network, registries, flaky browsers). On Latchkey managed runners they are detected, retried, and self-healed instead of failing your build:

• Dependency installs

This workflow runs 2 jobs per trigger. On Latchkey the same minutes cost up to 58% less than GitHub-hosted, with zero queue time.

Actions used in this workflow