Ansible how to fix destination path already exists and is not an empty directory?

I got an error when I am trying to do the git clone on the remote machine using Ansible and the error message which I got was destination path already exists and is not an empty directory

How do fix ansible's destination path already exists error when you are trying to clone the git repo?

In my case, the error came because I already had .git file present in my destination directory.

1- name: Read-write git checkout from github
2  ansible.builtin.git:
3    repo: https://github.com/rahulwagh/python-example.git
4    dest: ./basic-http-server 

In the above code my destination directory ./basic-http-server was pre-existing and already had .git file inside.

How I fixed and removed .git file?

1. Go inside the destination directory where you are trying to clone the repo. e.g.

1#Put the name of the destination directory
2
3cd NAME_OF_DESTINATION_DIRECTORY

2. Run the following list command to view the content of the directory

1ls -lart

3. Remove the .git directory if present.

1rm -rf .git

4. After removing the .git directory try re-running the ansible-playbook and it should succeed.

How to fix ansible's destination path already exists error when you are using copy and file module of Ansible?

If you're getting an error that says "destination path already exists and is not an empty directory," it means that Ansible is trying to create a directory at a path that already exists and contains files or subdirectories.

This error can occur when using the file or copy module in Ansible to create or copy a directory.

Here is how you can resolve the issue -

force: yes - Use the state option to set the directory's state to directory. For example, state: directory in the file module or force: yes in copy module. This will ensure that the directory is present, but won't create it if it already exists.

File module:-

Here is an example ansible code snippet -

1#Replace the "path: /path/to/directory" with your desired destination directory
2
3- name: Ensure the directory is present
4  file:
5    path: /path/to/directory
6    state: directory
7    force: yes

Copy module:- You could use the same approach with copy module instead of file but the option would be called force and the default is no, so you have to explicitly set it to yes, like so:

Here is an example ansible code snippet -

1#Replace the "path: /path/to/directory" with your desired destination directory
2
3- name: copy files to the directory
4  copy:
5    src: /path/to/source/files
6    dest: /path/to/destination/directory
7    force: yes

This will copy files to the directory even if it is not an empty directory.

Refer to stackoverflow for more similar threads