Workflow creation not idempotent

[myllynen]

A workflow definition like this seems to always cause changes reported for some reason:

controller_workflows:
  - name: Test Workflow Job Template
    description: Workflow for testing
    organization: Test Org
    inventory: Test Inventory
    limit: local
    extra_vars:
      message: Message from workflow
    simplified_workflow_nodes:
      - identifier: node1
        all_parents_must_converge: false
        unified_job_template: Test Random Failure
        credentials: []
        success_nodes:
          - node10
        failure_nodes:
          - node20
        always_nodes: []
      - identifier: node10
        approval_node:
          name: Test Approval
          description: Approval step for testing
          timeout: 0
        success_nodes:
          - node11
      - identifier: node11
        unified_job_template: Test Job Template
      - identifier: node20
        unified_job_template: Test Random Failure

With AAP 2.6-3 and ansible.platform 2.6.20251106:

TASK [infra.aap_configuration.controller_workflow_job_templates : add_workflows_schema | Create links between Workflow Nodes]
changed: [localhost] => (item=node1)
changed: [localhost] => (item=node10)
skipping: [localhost] => (item=node11) 
skipping: [localhost] => (item=node20) 

Not sure if this is due to infra.aap_collection but perhaps easiest to check here first. Thanks.

[djdanielsson]

This is a module issue, not related to our code

[djdanielsson]

We've investigated this issue against the latest ansible.controller collection (v4.7.9). The modify_associations method in controller_api.py now includes idempotency logic that compares existing association IDs with the desired ones using set comparison and returns early without making changes when they match:

if set(existing_associated_ids) == set(new_association_list):
    return

Since always_nodes, success_nodes, and failure_nodes are not in the ordered_associations list, they use this set-based comparison which should prevent false changed reports.

We believe this has been fixed in the latest version of the ansible.controller collection. Could you please upgrade to ansible.controller >= 4.7.9 and test again? If the issue persists, please reopen with updated details.

[myllynen]

I still see the issue with ansible.controller 4.7.9 (and ansible.platform 2.6.20260306). It's still the "Create links between Workflow Nodes" task that is always reporting changes, some ~200 other tasks all around are correctly reporting no changes.

I don't have permissions to reopen this issue. Thanks.