docsible

Docsible

About

Docsible is a command-line interface (CLI) written in Python that automates the documentation of Ansible roles and collections. It generates a Markdown-formatted README file for role or collection by scanning the Ansible YAML files.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Installation
• Usage
• Data Sources
• Prerequisites
• Contributing
• License

Features

• Generates a README in Markdown format
• Scans and includes default variables and role-specific variables
• Parses tasks, including special Ansible task types like 'block' and 'rescue'
• Optionally includes playbook content in the README
• CLI-based, easy to integrate into a CI/CD pipeline
• Provides a templating feature to customize output
• Supports multiple YAML files within tasks, defaults, vars directory
• Includes meta-data like author and license from meta/main.[yml/yaml]
• Generates a well-structured table for default and role-specific variables
• Support for encrypted Ansible Vault variables

Installation

How to create virtual env with python3

python3 -m venv docsible
source docsible/bin/activate

To install Docsible, you can run:

pip install docsible

Usage

To use Docsible, you can run the following command in your terminal:

Specific path

docsible --role /path/to/ansible/role --playbook /path/to/playbook.yml --graph

Document collection

docsible --collection ./collections_tests/lucian/ --no-backup --graph

Only role without playbook

docsible --role /path/to/ansible/role # without include a playbook into readme

$ docsible --help
Usage: docsible [OPTIONS]

Options:
  --role TEXT      Path to the Ansible role directory.
  --collection TEXT Path to the Ansible collection directory.
  --playbook TEXT  Path to the playbook file.
  --graph          Generate Mermaid graph for tasks.
  --no-backup      Do not backup the readme before remove.
  --no-docsible    Do not create .docsible file and do not print relative variable to generated README.md.
  --comments       Read comments from tasks files.
  --md-template    Path to the markdown template file.
  --append         Append to the existing README.md instead of replacing it.
  --version        Show the module version.
  --help           Show this message and exit.

Flags

• --role: Specifies the directory path to the Ansible role.
• --collection: Specifies the directory path to the Ansible collection.
• --playbook: Specifies the path to the Ansible playbook (Optional). ( Works only with roles )
• --graph: Generate mermaid for role and playbook.
• --no-backup: Ignore existent README.md and remove before generate a new one. (Optional).
• --comments: Read comments from tasks files. (Optional).
• --md-template: Specifies the path to the markdown template file (Optional). ( Works only with roles )
• --append: Append existing readme.md if needed

Data Sources

Docsible fetches information from the following files within the specified Ansible role:

• defaults/*.yml/yaml: For default variables
• vars/*.yml/yaml: For role-specific variables
• meta/main.yml/yaml: For role metadata
• tasks/*.yml/yaml: For tasks, including special task types and subfolders

Examples

Demo1 coffeemaker_midday role

Demo2 coffeemaker_morning role

Prerequisites

Docsible works with Python 3.x and requires the following libraries:

• Click
• Jinja2
• PyYAML

TODO

• Clean the code
• Add more features
• Custom templates for collection
• Multiple playbooks handle into mermaid for collection and role

About comments

This tool work whith several type of comments.

On variables and defaults

The tool read comments placed before a variable, only if it begin with specific tag:

# title: This tag will be used for popiulate the column Title of the README.md. It is a short description of the variable

# required: This tag will be used for popiulate the column Required of the README.md

# choices: This optional tag will be used for popiulate the column Choices of the README.md

On tasks

The tool will read all the line before each - name: of the tasks that begin with #. All comment will be reported to the column Comments of the tasks tables.

Contributing

For details on how to contribute, please read the Contributing Guidelines.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.

Author

• Lucian BLETAN