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Command Line Reference

Special commands

  • drivers
  • init
  • list
  • login
  • matrix
  • reset

Valid actions

  • check
  • cleanup

  • This action has cleanup and is not enabled by default. See the provisioner's documentation for further details.

  • converge : Converge will execute the sequence necessary to converge the instances.

  • create ** driver
  • dependency
  • destroy ** all, parallel, driver
  • idempotence
  • prepare ** force
  • side-effect
  • syntax
  • test - ** - Test command will execute the sequence necessary to test the instances.
  • verify

-s, --scenario-name

Target a specific scenario by name. In collection mode, nested scenarios can be targeted using a / separator (e.g., -s appliance_vlans/merged), and wildcards can target an entire group (e.g., -s "appliance_vlans/*"). See Nested Scenarios for details.

--parallel / --no-parallel

Passing extra arguments to the provisioner

... -- -vvv --tags foo,bar

    Providing additional command line arguments to the `ansible-playbook`
    command.  Use this option with care, as there is no sanitation or
    validation of input.  Options passed on the CLI override options
    provided in provisioner's `options` section of `molecule.yml`.

molecule init

molecule init scenario

molecule list

List command shows information about current scenarios.

molecule list

molecule login

When using a pre ansible-native configuration, if configured, Molecule has per resource awareness and can facilitate an interactive connection to a system.

When using an ansible-native configuration, the same connection methods used to connect to production systems are available.

Options leveraging the resources defined in the ansible inventory include:

Resource native connection options include:

  • SSH

  • podman exec

  • curl

  • psql, mysql, and mongosh

  • oc, kubectl, and odo

  • etc

molecule matrix

Matrix will display the subcommand's ordered list of actions, which can be changed in scenario configuration.

Test sequence commands

We can tell Molecule to create an instance with:

molecule create

We can verify that Molecule has created the instance and they're up and running with:

molecule list

Now, let's add a task to our role under tasks/main.yml file like so:

- name: Molecule Hello World!
  ansible.builtin.debug:
    msg: Hello, World!

We can then tell Molecule to test our role against our instance with:

molecule converge

If we want to manually inspect the instance afterward, we can run:

molecule login

We now have a free hand to experiment with the instance state.

Finally, we can exit the instance and destroy it with:

molecule destroy

Note

If Molecule reports any errors, it can be useful to pass the --debug option to get more verbose output.