Unexpected execution of all tasks despite target filtering

[skar404]

When running spot with a specific target (e.g., spot -t prod), all tasks are executed, including those not assigned to the specified target. This behavior appears to ignore the target filtering defined in the configuration.

I’m wondering if this is expected behavior or if I might have a configuration issue. Could you confirm if this behavior is correct, or suggest adjustments to the configuration?

Example Configuration:

ssh_key: keys/id_ed25519

targets:
  prod:
    hosts: [{ host: "public-vpn", user: "root" }]

  dev:
    hosts: [{ host: "public-vpn.dev", user: "root" }]

tasks:
  - name: config prod node
    targets: ["prod"]
    commands:
      - name: command1
        script: echo "Prod Hello World"

  - name: config dev node
    targets: ["dev"]
    commands:
      - name: command_2
        script: echo "Dev Hello World"

Bash:

> spot -t prod
spot v1.16.3-54baca2-2024-12-20T23:47:00Z
[public-vpn:22] run task "config prod node", commands: 1
[public-vpn:22] completed command "command1" {script: /bin/sh -c 'echo "Prod Hello World"'} (1s)
[public-vpn:22] completed task "config prod node", commands: 1 (3.126s)
[public-vpn:22] run task "config dev node", commands: 1
[public-vpn:22] completed command "command_2" {script: /bin/sh -c 'echo "Dev hello World"'} (786ms)
[public-vpn:22] completed task "config dev node", commands: 1 (3.018s)

Environment: macOS Sequoia 15.2

[umputun]

Please use discussion for questions like this, transferred.

[umputun]

Tasks are not assigned to specific targets in the way you meant, i.e., it is not a matching filter. The documentation mentions what it does: see https://github.com/umputun/spot?tab=readme-ov-file#tasks-and-commands

targets - list of target names, groups, tags, or host addresses to execute the task on. The command line -t flag can be used to override this field. The targets field may include variables. For more details, see Dynamic targets section.

In a simple case, the usage for such targets included in tasks is to be able to run complex playbooks affecting different hosts in different ways. This is a practical example of such usage - some commands run on a master server, and some commands run on nodes.

In more complicated cases, dynamic targets are a powerful thing, allowing runtime target selection.

If the goal is to run different tasks on different targets, you can achieve it by specifying both the target and task in the command line. I don't really see a use case for the filtering you expected to have here.

[skar404]

Thank you for the detailed response. I expected the -t flag to execute tasks only for a specific host without overriding anything. I was expecting behavior similar to host in Ansible.

The main use case is when I want to test the flow for target N in a playbook that includes multiple targets.

p.s. I checked and I think --task= works for me