Ansible not detecting Role default variables in its handler

Does ansible pass Role Default variables to the Handlers within the same Role?

Here's a minimal excerpt of the playbook that has the issue:

Role hierarchy

- playbook.yml - roles/ - gunicorn/ - defaults/ - main.yml - handlers/ - main.yml - code-checkout/ - tasks/ - main.yml 

Here's the file contents

gunicorn/defaults/main.yml

--- gu_log: "/tmp/gunicorn.log" 

gunicorn/handlers/main.yml

--- - name: Clear Gunicorn Log shell: rm {{ gu_log }} 

finalize/tasks/main.yml

--- - name: Test Handlers shell: ls notify: - Restart Gunicorn 

playbook.yml

--- - name: Deploy hosts: webservers tasks: - include: roles/finalize/tasks/main.yml handlers: - include: roles/gunicorn/handlers/main.yml 

AFAIK everything looks good. However, I get this error during the playbook execution

FAILED! => {"failed": true, "msg": "the field 'args' has an invalid value, which appears to include a variable that is undefined. The error was: 'gu_log' is undefined\n\nThe error appears to have been in '/roles/gunicorn/handlers/main.yml': line 3, column 3, but may\nbe elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.\n\nThe offending line appears to be:\n\n\n- name: Restart Gunicorn\n ^ here\n"}

Using Ansible 2.2 on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Here's a modified version of techraf's script that creates all the directories and demonstrates my issue

#!/bin/bash mkdir -p ./rtindru-test/roles/gunicorn mkdir -p ./rtindru-test/roles/gunicorn/defaults mkdir -p ./rtindru-test/roles/gunicorn/handlers mkdir -p ./rtindru-test/roles/finalize/tasks cat >./rtindru-test/roles/finalize/tasks/main.yml <<HANDLERS_END --- - name: Test Handlers shell: rm {{ gu_log }} HANDLERS_END cat >./rtindru-test/roles/gunicorn/handlers/main.yml <<HANDLERS_END --- - name: Clear Gunicorn Log shell: rm {{ gu_log }} HANDLERS_END cat >./rtindru-test/roles/gunicorn/defaults/main.yml <<DEFAULTS_END --- gu_log: "/tmp/gunicorn.log" DEFAULTS_END cat >./rtindru-test/playbook.yml <<PLAYBOOK_END --- - name: Deploy hosts: localhost tasks: - include: roles/finalize/tasks/main.yml handlers: - include: roles/gunicorn/handlers/main.yml PLAYBOOK_END touch /tmp/gunicorn.log ls -l /tmp/gunicorn.log ansible-playbook ./rtindru-test/playbook.yml ls -l /tmp/gunicorn.log 

Output

PLAY [Deploy]

---

TASK [setup] ******************************************************************* ok: [localhost]

TASK [Test Handlers] *********************************************************** fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"failed": true, "msg": "the field 'args' has an invalid value, which appears to include a variable that is undefined. The error was: 'gu_log' is undefined\n\nThe error appears to have been in '/rtindru-test/roles/finalize/tasks/main.yml': line 2, column 3, but may\nbe elsewhere in the file depending on the exact syntax problem.\n\nThe offending line appears to be:\n\n---\n- name: Test Handlers\n ^ here\n"} to retry, use: --limit @/rtindru-test/playbook.retry

PLAY RECAP ********************************************************************* localhost : ok=1 changed=0 unreachable=0
failed=1