as the port patches the source by seding s|/etc/ansible|${ETCDIR}|g, /usr/local/etc/ansible/ansible.cfg is not picked up by ansible. as a consequence, all other path, such as path to group_vars and roles, are also affected. in other distribution, the search path for ansible.cfg includes /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg, which should be translated to /usr/local/ansible/ansible.cfg in FreeBSD. this results in an interesting path to ansible.cfg; /usr/local/etc/py27-ansible/ansible/ansible.cfg i do not think that modifying default path to configuration file, other than /usr/local, is a good idea. having multiple ${ETCDIR} for multiple python flavors is a quite surprise in this case. this breaks some other tools, i.e. ansible.cfg is not picked up by the tool.
A commit references this bug: Author: lifanov Date: Mon Nov 5 02:07:11 UTC 2018 New revision: 484164 URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/ports/484164 Log: update sysutils/ansible* ports sysutils/ansible: 2.7.1 Changes: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v2.7.1/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.7.rst sysutils/ansible26: 2.6.7 Changes: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v2.6.7/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.6.rst sysutils/ansible25: 2.5.11 Changes: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v2.5.11/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.5.rst All ports: move default configuration directory back to LOCALBASE/etc/ansible as before the flavors conversion. Configuration is version-specific and not Python-specific and this is a more intuitive location. PR: 232377 Reported by: Tomoyuki Sakurai (default configuration path) Changes: head/UPDATING head/sysutils/ansible/Makefile head/sysutils/ansible/distinfo head/sysutils/ansible1/Makefile head/sysutils/ansible23/Makefile head/sysutils/ansible24/Makefile head/sysutils/ansible25/Makefile head/sysutils/ansible26/Makefile head/sysutils/ansible26/distinfo
Thank you for the report!