Ansible include_tasks will not run when tags are specified

When this changed in Ansible I had to add blocks to all my included files with the relevant tags configured.

However as of Ansible 2.7 you can tell Ansible to apply specific tags to all the included tasks. This means you don't need to make any changes in swarm.undo.yml. Your main.yml example above would look like this:

- name: remove swarm
  include_tasks:
    file: swarm.undo.yml
    # Adds these tags to all included tasks
    tags:  [ 'never', 'debug' ]
  tags: [ 'never', 'debug' ]

The behaviour seems normal, and you probably don't have any tasks tagged with never in swarm.undo.yml.

As per the documentation the tags are applicable for tasks and plays. So when you specify --tags never, the include_tasks (which is a task) gets included as expected. But only the tasks inside swarm.undo.yml that have the never tag will run.

Quoting from the above link:

Ansible reserves two tag names for special behavior: always and never. If you assign the always tag to a task or play, Ansible will always run that task or play, ...

Option 1: So one way is to make sure the relevant tasks in swarm.undo.yml have the never tag.

Option 2: If there are lot of tasks and all should be tagged with never, you can consider converting this task file as a playbook (with tag at play level) and use import_playbook.

Example swarm.undo.yml:

- hosts: myhosts
  tags:
  - never

  tasks:
  # your tasks go here

Then in your main.yml:

- name: Include swarm undo
  import_playbook: swarm.undo.yml

You should use "apply" keyword, this doesn't work if you write without that one. The correct syntax (from documentation) is

- name: Apply tags to tasks within included file
  include_tasks:
    file: install.yml
    apply:
      tags:
        - install

If you want to run all tasks using one tags there is the best way below:

- name: Include and run an inner and an outer task
  include_tasks:
    file: install.yml
    apply:
      tags: install
  tags: install

you could run with this options to debug:

ansible-playbook -i xxx tasks/xx.yml --list-tags
ansible-playbook -i xxx tasks/xx.yml --list-tasks

if tags is all, all tasks will run

Tags never and always

Are reserved you should not use them. Unless you know what they mean (bellow).

About tags on include_tasks

You must tag your include_tasks with always on it. To make filtering by tags work. By this issue.

- name          : my tasks with tags inside
  include_tasks : mytasks.yml
  tags          : [ 'always' ]