Doc interplay between host_vars and group_vars dirs and inventory dirs

[kpinc]

This is by observation of behavior, not by examination of code.

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[bcoca]

This is partially incorrect and due to not distinguishing what inventory sources are from what vars plugins provide.

All vars plugins (host_group_vars vars plugin governs the inclusion of host_vars/group_vars dirs) use the 'inventory source' as a base, when that is a directory the multiple files/subdirs do not count as independent inventory sources, just the original directory does.

Those directories (and vars_plugins and others from configuration INVENTORY_IGNORE_PATTERNS and INVENTORY_IGNORE_EXTS) are ignored if present, if not they would not have the same function you seem to expect. They would be processed at as part of an inventory source and they are probed as containing inventory files, but not vars files, which would end up either with warnings, errors or worse, creating unexpected hosts and groups depending on enabled inventory plugins.

[kpinc]

Thank you for your review. I've pushed a patch in response.

The new docs do not include mention of INVENTORY_IGNORE_PATTERS, etc. That seems overkill here.

[kpinc]

I added links to the ignore config settings, just to be through. Hopefully this is not confusing.

[bcoca]

I found so many things that needed updating in this page that i ended up creating my own PR #2416

[kpinc]

The concept with this PR is to focus on what happens when a directory is specified for inventory.