Specify output path in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

[Stefan Schindler]

Hi

Thank you for this role, it helps a lot.
I have noticed that I need to manually cleanup the old versions like /etc/apt/sources.list.d/deb_nodesource_com_node_8_x.list when changing to a different version.
This is problematic because

• sometimes I need to downgrade a host from eg. 15.x to 12.x
• there are old file lingering around, that later confuse people (including future me)

Looking forward hearing from you,
Stefan

[Thibaut Barrère]

I'm upgrading a setup from 12.x to 14.x and wondered about the same.

My current solution is to add a custom task running after this role, with (adapted from https://github.com/geerlingguy/ansible-role-nodejs/blob/439675c3cee118707bae026e76b7cd94c76d95ce/tasks/setup-Debian.yml):

# remove_old_node.yml
- name: Remove previous NodeSource repositories for Node.js.
  apt_repository:
    repo: "{{ item }}"
    state: absent # the important bit
  with_items:
    - "deb https://deb.nodesource.com/node_{{ delete_nodejs_version }} {{ ansible_distribution_release }} main"
    - "deb-src https://deb.nodesource.com/node_{{ delete_nodejs_version }} {{ ansible_distribution_release }} main"
  when: delete_nodejs_version is defined

I can then optionally set the delete_nodejs_version to e.g. 12.x to remove the old version.

I have coupled this with a ServerSpec to lock the behaviour down:

  describe command('ls /etc/apt/sources.list.d') do
    let(:sources) {
      subject.stdout.split("\n").sort
    }
    it "contains the exact set of specified sources" do
      expect(sources).to eq([
        "apt_postgresql_org_pub_repos_apt.list", 
        "deb_nodesource_com_node_14_x.list", 
        "oss_binaries_phusionpassenger_com_apt_passenger.list", 
        "yarn.list"
      ])
    end
  end

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[Eric Pfeiffer]

Another way to remove old versions of the NodeJS repositories is to use a task like this where you use the lineinfile module to look for all lines which do not match the currently selected NodeJS version and remove those lines.

- name: software | nodejs | remove old repositories
  lineinfile:
    path: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list
    regexp: 'https:\/\/deb\.nodesource\.com\/node_(?!{{ nodejs_version|regex_replace("x", "") }})'
    state: absent
  when: ansible_os_family == "Debian"

This is what I've come up with which doesn't require maintaining a separate "old node versions" list. Maybe someone knows of a cleaner way to do it?