~ gets evaluated when using community.general.osx_defaults

[pavelzw]

Summary

When passing ~ as value to the community.general.osx_defaults plugin, it gets directly evaluated to /Users/pavelzwerschke.

This is probably because the value is not passed with quotes to the command line.

When doing it manually, we get the same problem:

$ defaults write com.googlecode.iterm2 PrefsCustomFolder ~/.config/iterm2
$ defaults read com.googlecode.iterm2 PrefsCustomFolder
/Users/pavelzwerschke/.config/iterm2

Instead, we want ansible to do something like this:

$ defaults write com.googlecode.iterm2 PrefsCustomFolder '~/.config/iterm2'
$ defaults read com.googlecode.iterm2 PrefsCustomFolder
~/.config/iterm2

Also, when executing the playbook twice, it still says changed instead of ok the second time because the string comparison is still evaluated to false.

Issue Type

Bug Report

Component Name

community.general.osx_defaults

Ansible Version

$ ansible --version
ansible [core 2.13.3]
  config file = /Users/pavelzwerschke/Projekte/ansible-provision/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/Users/pavelzwerschke/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /opt/homebrew/Caskroom/mambaforge/base/envs/ansible/lib/python3.10/site-packages/ansible
  ansible collection location = /Users/pavelzwerschke/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections
  executable location = /opt/homebrew/Caskroom/mambaforge/base/envs/ansible/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.10.6 | packaged by conda-forge | (main, Aug 22 2022, 20:41:22) [Clang 13.0.1 ]
  jinja version = 3.1.2
  libyaml = True

Community.general Version

$ ansible-galaxy collection list community.general
# /Users/pavelzwerschke/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections
Collection        Version
----------------- -------
community.general 5.5.0

# /opt/homebrew/Caskroom/mambaforge/base/envs/ansible/lib/python3.10/site-packages/ansible_collections
Collection        Version
----------------- -------
community.general 5.5.0

Configuration

$ ansible-config dump --only-changed
DEFAULT_HOST_LIST(/Users/pavelzwerschke/Projekte/ansible-provision/ansible.cfg) = ['/Users/pavelzwerschke/Projekte/ansible-provision/inventory']

OS / Environment

macOS 12.5.1

Steps to Reproduce

---
- hosts: all
  tasks:
    - name: Ensure iTerm2 custom preferences location is set.
      community.general.osx_defaults:
        domain: com.googlecode.iterm2
        key: PrefsCustomFolder
        value: "~/.config/iterm2"
        type: string
        state: present

Expected Results

Expected:

$ defaults read com.googlecode.iterm2 PrefsCustomFolder
~/.config/iterm2

Actual Results

$ defaults read com.googlecode.iterm2 PrefsCustomFolder
/Users/pavelzwerschke/.config/iterm2

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow the Ansible Code of Conduct

[ansibullbot]

Files identified in the description:

• plugins/modules/system/osx_defaults.py

If these files are incorrect, please update the component name section of the description or use the !component bot command.

click here for bot help

[ansibullbot]

cc @!UNKNOWN @Akasurde @danieljaouen @indrajitr @kyleabenson @martinm82 @notok
click here for bot help

[felixfontein]

The problem is that expand_user_and_vars=False needs to be passed to module.run_command() (https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.general/blob/main/plugins/modules/system/osx_defaults.py#L307). The default value for that flag is unfortunately True.

[pavelzw]

Would it break anything to set the flag to False there?

[felixfontein]

I think that should be ok. (Every change breaks something: https://xkcd.com/1172/)