Display the time it takes each vagrant ansible task to complete

Question

I'm converting a vagrant provisioner from shell to ansible and I was wondering if there's any option to show the actual time it takes to complete each task?

Ideally I want to benchmark the difference between installing multiple packages in yum using a shell: method and the in built yum: with_items method. ATM I'm sitting here with a stop watch but I need accurate times for this.

Answer 1

I've solved for timing Ansible task durations by adding a callback plugin. Callback plugins were designed to allow you to run your own arbirary code based on events that happen in the context of an Ansible run.

The plugin I use is easily deployed by creating a callback_plugins directory and dropping a python script into it.

Here is an sample of the resulting output at the end of your playbook run:

PLAY RECAP ******************************************************************** 
npm_install_foo | Install node dependencies via npm ------------------- 194.92s
gulp_build | Run Gulp to build ----------------------------------------- 89.99s
nodejs | Update npm ---------------------------------------------------- 26.96s
common | Update apt cache and upgrade base os packages ----------------- 17.78s
forever | Install forever (restarts Node.js if it fails) --------------- 16.84s
nodejs | Node.js | Install Node.js and npm ----------------------------- 15.11s
bower | Install bower --------------------------------------------------- 9.37s
Copy locally fetched repo to each instance ------------------------------ 8.03s
express | Express | Install Express ------------------------------------- 8.00s

Additionally, I prepend the shell command time to the ansible-playbook run. This nicely aggregates all of the individual task durations.

EDIT:

As of Ansible v2.0.0 this particular plugin ships with Ansible itself! Just add callback_whitelist = profile_tasks to your ~/.ansible.cfg file.