Run only one task and handler from ansible playbook

Question

How can I run a single task from an Ansible playbook and the handler that gets notified when that task completes successfully, while skipping all other tasks in the relevant playbook?

Currently I execute the following:

ansible-playbook --start-at-task "task1" --step -K -i hosts playbook.yml

and then press Ctrl+c after the task has finished. This will also skip the handler however.

I know I can add a tag to the task and use that, as in How to run only one task in ansible playbook?, but I would prefer being able to do this without adding a tag. Is that possible?

Answer 1

It is possible to run a separate role (from roles/ dir):

ansible -i stage.yml -m include_role -a name=create-os-user localhost

and a separate task file:

ansible -i stage.yml -m include_tasks -a file=tasks/create-os-user.yml localhost

If you externalize tasks from role to root tasks/ directory (reuse is achieved by import_tasks: ../../../tasks/create-os-user.yml) you can run it independently from playbook/role.

Answer 2

There's currently nothing coming with ansible-playbook to allow you to run a single task, like --task. Thus, to me, the tag along with the --tags option is your best solution here.