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I'm attempting to install psycopg2 into a Python virtualenv with Ansible's pip module, but I need to prepend an entry to PATH for it to build correctly (it needs to know the path to the directory containing pg_config). I see that I can pass environment to the pip module, but I'm unsure of how to prepend rather than overwrite PATH.

Here I'm attempting to prepend the path with the necessary directory, but it overwrites the virtualenv PATH and fails:

- pip:
    name: psycopg2
    virtualenv: /path/to/my/venv
  environment:
    PATH: /usr/pgsql-9.3/bin:$PATH

1 Answer 1

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If you are using Ansible 1.4 or later (which I recommend) you can access the remote PATH env variable:

- pip: name=psycopg2 virtualenv=/path/to/my/venv
  environment:
    PATH: /usr/pgsql-9.3/bin:{{ ansible_env.PATH }}

If instead you are interested in the PATH env var of the local client running the Ansible scripts (instead of the targeted server), then you want to do the following:

- pip: name=psycopg2 virtualenv=/path/to/my/venv
  environment:
    # This only makes sense if your client and server are homogeneous, that is,
    # they have the same PATHs.
    PATH: /usr/pgsql-9.3/bin:{{ lookup('env', 'PATH') }}
4
  • 4
    The ansible_env.PATH option was what I needed — worked perfectly. Thanks! Feb 21, 2014 at 4:56
  • 1
    Note that this takes the PATH of the workstation, not the server!
    – vdboor
    Mar 12, 2014 at 8:38
  • 4
    If you need to prepend ~/bin, use PATH: "{{ansible_env.HOME}}/bin:{{ansible_env.PATH}}". If you instead use PATH: "~/bin:{{ansible_env.PATH}}", then some programs (such as Python's shutil.which) are unable to use that component.
    – Lekensteyn
    Sep 18, 2014 at 17:29
  • 3
    Be also aware that ansible_env refers to the environment of the SSH user, not the sudo environment. ansible_env.USER may therefore result in root rather than an unprivileged user.
    – Lekensteyn
    Sep 18, 2014 at 17:30

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