quote-style `single` leads to fatal errors & YAML not being fixed/rewritten at all

[mbunkus]

Summary

Having no yamllint config at all or one with quote-style: "double" makes ansible-lint convert single quotes into double quotes when fixing anything. That's as expected. However, with quote-style: 'single' ansible-lint spits out an error for each double-quoted string & does not fix that entry at all (or anything else as it cannot rewrite YAML at all).

Issue Type

• Bug Report

OS / ENVIRONMENT

WARNING: PATH altered to include /home/mosu/opt/ansible/2.19/.venv/bin, /home/mosu/opt/ansible/2.19/.venv/bin :: This is usually a sign of broken local setup, which can cause unexpected behaviors.
ansible-lint 25.11.1 using ansible-core:2.19.4 ansible-compat:25.11.0 ruamel-yaml:0.18.16 ruamel-yaml-clib:0.2.15
WARNING  Project directory /.ansible cannot be used for caching as it is not writable.
WARNING  Using unique temporary directory /tmp/.ansible-0aaa for caching.

• ansible installation method: uv venv followed by activation & uv pip install "ansible-core >= 2.19, < 2.20" "ansible >= 12.0, < 13.0" (cannot go newer as I have machines whose Python is too old for 2.20)
• ansible-lint installation method: same venv as Ansible, activation & uv pip install ansible-lint (no version limitation here)

STEPS TO REPRODUCE

Starting with an empty directory (let's call it test03) & no yamllint & ansible-lint configurations at all, I first create a minimal yamllint configuration that would be acceptable to ansible-lint & that enables single quotes. This is now test03/.yamllint.yml:

---
extends: 'default'

rules:
  comments:
    min-spaces-from-content: 1
  comments-indentation: false
  braces:
    max-spaces-inside: 1
  octal-values:
    forbid-implicit-octal: true
    forbid-explicit-octal: true
  quoted-strings:
    quote-type: 'single'
    required: false
    check-keys: false

Now create a minimal test test03/inventory.yml with a single double-quoted string so that ansible-lint has something to fix:

---
hosts:
  test01:
    vars:
      chunky: "bacon"

In test03 run yamllint inventory.yml for confirming it doesn't like the quotes:

[0 mosu@sweet-chili 0.000s ~/ansible/test03] yamllint inventory.yml
inventory.yml
  5:15      error    string value is not quoted with single quotes  (quoted-strings)

Now run ansible-lint --fix=yaml & observe fatal errors:

[1 mosu@sweet-chili 0.042s ~/ansible/test03] ansible-lint --fix=yaml
WARNING: PATH altered to include /home/mosu/opt/ansible/2.19/.venv/bin, /home/mosu/opt/ansible/2.19/.venv/bin :: This is usually a sign of broken local setup, which can cause unexpected behaviors.
WARNING  Project directory /.ansible cannot be used for caching as it is not writable.
WARNING  Using unique temporary directory /tmp/.ansible-0aaa for caching.
ERROR    Rule specific fix not applied for: yaml[quoted-strings]/yaml inventory.yml:5
WARNING  Listing 1 violation(s) that are fatal
yaml[quoted-strings]: String value is not quoted with single quotes
inventory.yml:5

Read documentation for instructions on how to ignore specific rule violations.

# Rule Violation Summary

  1 yaml profile:basic tags:formatting,yaml

Failed: 1 failure(s), 0 warning(s) in 2 files processed of 2 encountered. Last profile that met the validation criteria was 'min'.

Verify that inventory.yml was not modified:

[2 mosu@sweet-chili 1.005s ~/ansible/test03] rg bacon inventory.yml
5:      chunky: "bacon"

I can run the test the other way, too: configure yamllint to want double quotes, give ansible-lint an inventory.yml that contains single-quoted string. Here ansible-lint will still print an error but actually fix the YAML.

Same setup, but in test02 with .yamllint.yml:

---
extends: "default"

rules:
  comments:
    min-spaces-from-content: 1
  comments-indentation: false
  braces:
    max-spaces-inside: 1
  octal-values:
    forbid-implicit-octal: true
    forbid-explicit-octal: true
  quoted-strings:
    quote-type: "double"
    required: false
    check-keys: false

and inventory.yml:

---
hosts:
  test01:
    vars:
      chunky: 'bacon'

Verify that yamllint complains & that ansible-lint actually fixes things:

[0 mosu@sweet-chili 0.012s ~/ansible/test02] yamllint inventory.yml
inventory.yml
  5:15      error    string value is not quoted with double quotes  (quoted-strings)

[1 mosu@sweet-chili 0.044s ~/ansible/test02] ansible-lint --fix=yaml
WARNING: PATH altered to include /home/mosu/opt/ansible/2.19/.venv/bin, /home/mosu/opt/ansible/2.19/.venv/bin :: This is usually a sign of broken local setup, which can cause unexpected behaviors.
WARNING  Project directory /.ansible cannot be used for caching as it is not writable.
WARNING  Using unique temporary directory /tmp/.ansible-0aaa for caching.
ERROR    Rule specific fix not applied for: yaml[quoted-strings]/yaml inventory.yml:5

Modified 1 file.
Passed: 0 failure(s), 0 warning(s) in 2 files processed of 2 encountered. Last profile that met the validation criteria was 'production'.
[0 mosu@sweet-chili 0.992s ~/ansible/test02] rg bacon inventory.yml
5:      chunky: "bacon"

Note that there's still an ERROR output, which I find highly confusing, given that the YAML is actually fixed.

Now for the last test in test01: no yamllint config at all, meaning built-in defaults for ansible-lint. We now only have test01/inventory.yml:

---
hosts:
  test01:
    vars:
      chunky: 'bacon'

Same program calls to lint, fix & verify:

[0 mosu@sweet-chili 0.004s ~/ansible/test01] yamllint inventory.yml
[0 mosu@sweet-chili 0.042s ~/ansible/test01] ansible-lint --fix=yaml
WARNING: PATH altered to include /home/mosu/opt/ansible/2.19/.venv/bin, /home/mosu/opt/ansible/2.19/.venv/bin :: This is usually a sign of broken local setup, which can cause unexpected behaviors.
WARNING  Project directory /.ansible cannot be used for caching as it is not writable.
WARNING  Using unique temporary directory /tmp/.ansible-0aaa for caching.

Modified 1 file.
Passed: 0 failure(s), 0 warning(s) in 1 files processed of 1 encountered. Last profile that met the validation criteria was 'production'.
[0 mosu@sweet-chili 0.971s ~/ansible/test01] rg bacon inventory.yml
5:      chunky: "bacon"

Note that:

1. yamllint doesn't show an error as there's no yamlling config to apply on my system for test01, nor a global one
2. ansible-lint does NOT show an error, unlike in test02, and it still fixed the YAML

Desired Behavior

For test03 (yamllint configured to single quotes) I would expect:

• no ERRORs shown by ansible-lint
• ansible-ilnt actually fixing the YAML to use single quotes

For test02 (yamllint configured to double quotes) I would expect:

• no ERRORs shown by ansible-lint so that behavior is completely identical to test01 case (the one without a yamllint config)

Actual Behavior

Described in detail in the "STEPS TO REPRODUCE" section