Setup module no longer saves to disk, as templates are mostly useful in playbooks and this allows lots of simplifications

around file pathing and removes occasional permissions conflicts depending on how things are used.

lib/ansible/runner/__init__.py

@@ -545,6 +545,9 @@ class Runner(object):
     def _execute_template(self, conn, tmp):
         ''' handler for template operations '''
 
+        if not self.is_playbook:
+            raise errors.AnsibleError("in current versions of ansible, templates are only usable in playbooks")
+
         # load up options
         options  = utils.parse_kv(self.module_args)
         source   = options.get('src', None)
@@ -571,38 +574,11 @@ class Runner(object):
                 result = dict(failed=True, msg="could not find src in first_available_file list")
                 return ReturnData(host=conn.host, comm_ok=False, result=result)
 
-
         if self.module_vars is not None:
             inject.update(self.module_vars)
 
         source = utils.template(source, inject, self.setup_cache)
 
-        #(host, ok, data, err) = (None, None, None, None)
-
-        if not self.is_playbook:
-
-            # not running from a playbook so we have to fetch the remote
-            # setup file contents before proceeding...
-            if metadata is None:
-                if self.remote_user == 'root':
-                    metadata = '/etc/ansible/setup'
-                else:
-                    # path is expanded on remote side
-                    metadata = "~/.ansible/tmp/setup" 
-            
-            # install the template module
-            slurp_module = self._transfer_module(conn, tmp, 'slurp')
-
-            # run the slurp module to get the metadata file
-            args = "src=%s" % metadata
-            result1  = self._execute_module(conn, tmp, slurp_module, args)
-            if not 'content' in result1.result or result1.result.get('encoding','base64') != 'base64':
-                result1.result['failed'] = True
-                return result1
-            content = base64.b64decode(result1.result['content'])
-            inject = utils.json_loads(content)
-
-
         # install the template module
         copy_module = self._transfer_module(conn, tmp, 'copy')