Cliconf plugins are abstractions over the CLI interface to network devices. They provide a standard interface for Ansible to execute tasks on those network devices.
These plugins generally correspond one-to-one to network device platforms. The appropriate cliconf plugin will thus be automatically loaded based on the ansible_network_os variable.
You can extend Ansible to support other network devices by dropping a custom plugin into the cliconf_plugins directory.
The cliconf plugin to use is determined automatically from the ansible_network_os variable. There should be no reason to override this functionality.
Most cliconf plugins can operate without configuration. A few have additional options that can be set to impact how tasks are translated into CLI commands.
Plugins are self-documenting. Each plugin should document its configuration options.
You can use ansible-doc -t cliconf -l to see the list of available plugins. Use ansible-doc -t cliconf <plugin name> to see detailed documentation and examples.
See also
© 2012–2018 Michael DeHaan
© 2018–2019 Red Hat, Inc.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.9/plugins/cliconf.html