Ansible config not respected

[thesefer]

Summary

When having one specific playbook open, I receive the following problem below. The problem is the roles_path from the ansible.cfg is not being respected. The linter looks at the wrong directories.

Output from lint on console

ansible-lint -v
[...]
INFO     Set ANSIBLE_ROLES_PATH=/data/home/user/git/deployment/ansible/.ansible/roles:roles:/data/home/user/git/deployment/ansible/roles

Output > Ansible Server: I do not have this option.

Extension version

25.8.1

VS Code version

1.104.0

Ansible Version

ansible [core 2.17.13]
  config file = /data/home/user/git/deployment/ansible/ansible.cfg
  configured module search path = ['/data/home/user/git/deployment/ansible/modules']
  ansible python module location = /usr/local/lib/python3.10/dist-packages/ansible
  ansible collection location = /data/home/user/git/deployment/ansible/collections/ansible_collections:/data/home/user/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections
  executable location = /usr/local/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.10.12 (main, Aug 15 2025, 14:32:43) [GCC 11.4.0] (/usr/bin/python3)
  jinja version = 3.0.3
  libyaml = True

OS / Environment

SSH Remote Ubuntu 22.04.5, ansible-lint 25.8.2 using ansible-core:2.17.13 ansible-compat:25.8.1 ruamel-yaml:0.18.15 ruamel-yaml-clib:0.2.12

Relevant log output

the role 'int.partitioning' was not found in /data/home/user/git/deployment/ansible/playbooks/roles:/tmp/.ansible-23ab/roles:/data/home/user/.ansible/roles:/usr/share/ansible/roles:/etc/ansible/roles:/data/home/user/git/deployment/ansible/playbooks ansible-lintsyntax-check[specific]

[thesefer]

Could it be that the plugin is looking at the workspace level only as per How can I get VS Code Ansible extension to recognize my roles? ?

[alisonlhart]

@thesefer I think you are on the right track of what the issue is. We still need to triage and determine how to handle this. I believe the workaround in the post you linked should resolve the issue for now.

There is another ansible-lint issue that seems to fit here: #885
This is a feature request raised some time ago, but I agree that we should evaluate a better way to handle env vars in these scenarios.

On another note, can you provide your workspace directory structure so we can look deeper into this specific problem and see if it aligns with the same request or is a separate issue?