Passing free-form commands to Ansible using complex-args form

Short answer: Don't use the command, raw, script, or shell modules. Write your own module that accepts the command as a "normal" argument.

Long answer:

In most cases, you can do this:

- shell: echo hello_world > /tmp/something
  args:
    creates: /tmp/something

However, this fails in some edge cases:

- shell: echo hello_world > creates=something
  args:
    creates: creates=something  # The file is named "creates=something"

I don't know of a general way to handle this, but a bash-specific solution is:

- shell: echo hello_world > "creates=something"
  args:
    creates: creates=something