.. contents:: Topics


Strategy Plugins
----------------

Strategy plugins control the flow of play execution by handling task and host scheduling.


Enabling Strategy Plugins
+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Only one strategy plugin can be used in a play, but you can use different ones for each play in a playbook or Ansible run.
The default is the :doc:`linear <strategy/linear>` plugin. You can change this default in Ansible :doc:`configuration <../config>` using an environment variable:

.. code-block:: shell

    export ANSIBLE_STRATEGY=free

or in the `ansible.cfg` file:

.. code-block:: ini

    [defaults]
    strategy=linear

You can also specify the strategy plugin in the play via the :ref:`strategy` keyword::

  - hosts: all
    strategy: debug
    tasks:
      - copy: src=myhosts dest=/etc/hosts
        notify: restart_tomcat

      - package: name=tomcat state=present

    handlers:
      - name: restart_tomcat
        service: name=tomcat state=restarted


Plugin List
+++++++++++

You can use ``ansible-doc -t strategy -l`` to see the list of available plugins. 
Use ``ansible-doc -t strategy <plugin name>`` to see plugin-specific specific documentation and examples.


.. toctree:: :maxdepth: 1
    :glob:

    strategy/*

.. seealso::

   :doc:`../playbooks`
       An introduction to playbooks
   :doc:`inventory`
       Ansible inventory plugins
   :doc:`callback`
       Ansible callback plugins
   :doc:`../playbooks_filters`
       Jinja2 filter plugins
   :doc:`../playbooks_tests`
       Jinja2 test plugins
   :doc:`../playbooks_lookups`
       Jinja2 lookup plugins
   `User Mailing List <http://groups.google.com/group/ansible-devel>`_
       Have a question?  Stop by the google group!
   `irc.freenode.net <http://irc.freenode.net>`_
       #ansible IRC chat channel