A Newsletter for the Ansible Developer Community Issue #97, 2023-04-04 (Past Issues)

Welcome to The Bullhorn, our newsletter for the Ansible developer community. If you have any questions or content you’d like to share, you're welcome to chat with us in the Ansible Social room on Matrix, and mention newsbot to have your news item tagged for review for the next weekly issue!

KEY DATES ⏱️

cybette said

2023-04-11: DaWGs meeting, 15:00 UTC

2023-04-12: Community WG meeting, 18:00 UTC (propose topics here)

2023-04-13: Bullhorn #98 content deadline, 18:00 UTC

2023-04-24: ETA for Ansible-Core 2.14.5 and 2.15.0rc1

2023-04-25: ETA for Ansible 7.5.0 release

GENERAL NEWS UPDATES 🔈️

Gwmngilfen said

Contributor Summit & Community survey results for Feb

After CfgMgmtCamp and Ansible Contributor Summit, we ran our usual post-event survey, which also asks more general questions about the state of the community.

I've now closed the forms and done the analysis, and you can find the results here. In general it's fairly consistent with previous surveys (which you can find here).

Overall we're seeing more of the themes we've already discussed in the community strategy so I hope the plans for the year ahead will positively impact that. Check it out, and let me know your thoughts!

cybette shared

Website Working Group

We welcome you to review the new Ansible Community website concept and give us some feedback! You can comment in the HackMD note, or drop by the Website WG Matrix room and chat with us. Look forward to hearing from you!

MAJOR NEW RELEASES 🏆️

Ansible ↗ 📦️

The Ansible package includes ansible-core and is a batteries-included package that provides a curated set of Ansible collections. See the Ansible roadmaps for future release plans.

anwesha contributed

Ansible 7.4.0 is out! ❤️

💽You can install it by running the following command or download the release tarball directly from pypi:

pip install ansible==7.4.0 --user

➡️ Check Release Notes📦️🗒️ and Ansible 7 Porting Guide for more details!

DevTools ↗ ⛏️

Projects to make it easier to write and test Ansible Content. Includes VScode extension, language server, ansible-lint, molecule, ansible-navigator and potentially other development goodies. To see what's planned, and how you can help checkout the foundation-devtools project board

Shatakshi contributed

Ansible-Navigator version 3.0.0 is out! Dropping support for Python 3.8, couple of new features, and a long list of bug fixes.

Some of the notable changes are:

Adding json output support for images and collections subcommand.

Adapting PEP 621 packaging.

Easier prompt support with a new CLI parameter enable_prompts for run subcommand.

Removing towncrier, related files and navigator's share directory.

Adapting latest creator-ee updates.

Adding more volume mount options. ... and much more :)

Please do check out the release notes for all the updates.

Antsibull ↗ 🐂

Tooling for building the Ansible package and collection documentation.

felixfontein said

antsibull-docs-parser 0.2.0 and antsibull-docs-ts 0.2.0 are out. These are dependency-less Python respectively TypeScript libraries that allow to process Ansible markup, including the new semantic markup.

felixfontein shared

antsibull-changelog 0.20.0 (changelog) has been released. The main news is that we switched the build system from poetry-core to hatchling. This should not have any visible effect to users of antsibull-changelog.

felixfontein contributed

antsibull-docs 1.11.0 (changelog) has been released. It contains two new important features, first semantic markup support for roles (which was missing so far), and second a markup validator which validates classic and semantic Ansible markup.

AWX Project ↗

AWX provides a web-based user interface, REST API, and task engine built on top of Ansible.

john-westcott-iv contributed

We're happy to announce that the next release of AWX, version 21.14.0 is now available! Some notable features include: * Use ansible-runner change to get periodic keep-alive messages in K8S * Automatically build image for feature branch * Add scm_branch to inventory source and inventory update * [New Feature] Add Bulk add host and bulk job launch * Add instance groups roles * Adds support for a pseudolocalization and lang query params * Turn off auto completion on the login form * Don't use githubusercontent for containers.conf and podman-contianers.conf * [New Feature] Introducing tech preview of the new AWX UI * Expose execution node var for playbook * Expose SOCIAL_AUTH_USERNAME_IS_FULL_EMAIL

In addition AWX Operator version 1.4.0 has also been released! Some notable features include: * Use sha1 instead of md5 to make the installer work in FIPS * Add loadbalancerip to spec file * Revert to using k8s_cp module to read backup files

Please see the releases pages for more details: AWX, Operator.

TheRealHaoLiu said

We're happy to announce that the next release of AWX, version 22.0.0 is now available! Some notable features include: * Allow soft deletion of HostMetrics and add usage collection utility * Allow TLS 1.2 for Receptor connections * Allow for using Ansible's constructed inventory plugin to dynamically group hosts from AWX inventories * Allow web and task container to be deployed in separate deployment on Kubernetes

In addition AWX Operator version 2.0.0 has also been released! Some notable features include: * Allow TLS 1.2 for Receptor connections * Deploy web and task component in independent deployment

Please see the releases pages for more details: AWX, Operator.

PROJECT UPDATES 🛠️

AWX Project ↗

AWX provides a web-based user interface, REST API, and task engine built on top of Ansible.

Lila Yasin said

Announcing AWX Web/Task Split Deployments for Kubernetes: * In the v22 release of AWX, the web/API backend and the task backend now live in separate Kubernetes deployments. * With the split deployments, we can now scale replicas separately or together. * To utilize this feature, you can edit your awx-operator spec to indicate the number of replicas you would like. * You can scale replicas up or down for each deployment by using the web_replicas or task_replicas respectively. You can scale all pods across both deployments by using replicas as well. - If you specify the replicas field, the key passed will scale both the web and task replicas to the same number. - If web_replicas or task_replicas is ever passed, it will override the existing replicas field on the specific deployment with the new key value. * This enhancement not only allows for independent web and task scaling and replicas, it also paves the way for automatic scaling down the line. * We want your feedback! Do you find this feature helpful? Let us know on Matrix! * Find an issue? Please report those on GitHub.

alancoding said

We have merged the constructed inventory feature into AWX and it will go out in the next release. This is an alternative to smart inventory and addresses the key pain points like lack of groups, filtering on hostvars, and using general Ansible jinja2 templates for the user criteria.

DevTools ↗ ⛏️

cidrblock said

On behalf of the ansible devtools team: ansible-navigator verion v3.0.0 was just released. Included are a long list of bug fixes and the removal of python3.8 support. Have a look here.

Thank you to all the devtools project contributors, including a first time contributor @eamigo.

COLLECTION UPDATES 🪄

felixfontein shared

community.general 6.5.0 (changelog) has been released with new features, bugfixes, and new plugins. Note that the next minor 6.x.y release will be 6.6.0 on April 24th, and after that the next minor/major release will be 7.0.0 on May 8th. That is one week before May 15th, the feature freeze date for Ansible 8.

briantist contributed

community.hashi_vault version 4.2.0 [changelog] has been released with a new KVv2 write module and a warning/deprecation for duplicated term string option use in the hashi_vault lookup.

tremble said

amazon.aws 5.4.0 has been released with bugfixes for the ec2_metadata_facts, ec2_vol, rds_instance and route53_info modules, as well as feature enhancements for the ec2_spot_instance and route53_health_check modules - see changelog for details.

community.aws 5.4.0 has been released with feature enhancements for the ecs_service and sns modules - see changelog for details.

HELP WANTED 🙏

andersson007_ contributed

The new collection inclusion requests are waiting for your reviews. Please help the community extend the package!

COMMUNITY EVENTS AND MEETUPS 📅

anwesha shared

Ansible Kolkata Meetup group is rebooting its journey on 8th April 2023 at Indus Net Technologies, Kolkata, West Bengal. Learn about the Ansible Ecosystem and Automation with AWX from our Ansible Upstream. Book your slot now here.

cybette shared

Ansible Dresden meetup group is having a session on Dynamic Inventories or How to handle AWS, Azure and more, Thursday April 13 at 5:30 PM CEST. Check out the meetup page for details and RSVP!

cybette shared

Ansible Atlanta meetup group is having a session on Enterprise level Ansible Automation Overview, Thursday April 20 at 7:00 PM EDT. Check out the meetup page for details and RSVP!

resmo contributed

The 13th Ansible Zürich in person meetup is happening on May 31 2023, details and RSVP.

THAT'S ALL FOR NOW!

Have any questions you’d like to ask, or issues you’d like to see covered? Please ask in #social:ansible.com! See you next time!