Installing packages with ansible only if they do not exist
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Part of my neovim setup requires having the python formatter installed and callable. I install it with so that I don't have to manage a virtual environment...

Date: December 24, 2021

Part of my neovim setup requires having the black python formatter installed and callable. I install it with pipx so that I don’t have to manage a virtual environment </virtual-environment/> and have it available everywhere. So far this works well for me, if there are ever breaking changes I may need to rethink this.

re-installing a bunch of things that are already installed can be quite a waste and really add up to my ansible run time, so for most of my ansible tasks that install a command like this I have been following this pattern.

1. check if the command is installed with

   command -v <command>
2. register that step
3. ignore if that step fails
4. add a

   when: <xxx>_exists is failed

   condition to the step that installs that command.

```
- name: check is black installed
  shell: command -v black
  register: black_exists
  ignore_errors: yes

- name: install black
  when: black_exists is failed
  shell: pipx install black
```

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCFg6-W5SBI

│ I made a video based on this post, check it out if its your thing