Want to have install packages in an agnostic way (eg. apt, yum, etc.) if all the package names are the same – regardless of the system? There are two ways to do it.

Use an action, and iterate over each package

- action: "{{ansible_pkg_mgr}} name={{item}} state=latest"
  with_items:
   - ntp
   - acpid
   - haveged
   - irqbalance
   - nano
   - screen
   - wget
   - sysstat

Concatenate list and pass to package manager module

For the fast way, as all package manager modules support passing package names as a comma separated list (which will be executed in one go by the module – the faster way)

Site definition

  vars:
    default_packages:
     - ntp
     - acpid
     - haveged
     - irqbalance
     - nano
     - screen
     - wget
     - sysstat

Task

- action: "{{ansible_pkg_mgr}} name={{default_packages|join(\",\")}} state=latest"