A Newsletter for the Ansible Developer Community Issue #79, 2022-10-28 (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 shared

2022-11-01: DaWGs meeting, 15:00 UTC

2022-11-02: Community WG meeting, 18:00 UTC (propose topics here)

2022-11-03: Bullhorn #80 content deadline, 18:00 UTC

2022-11-07: ETA for Ansible-Core 2.13.6 and Ansible-Core 2.12.11 releases (if those releases have updates)

2022-11-07: Ansible-core 2.14 GA

2022-11-07: Last day for collections to make backwards incompatible releases that will be accepted into Ansible-7

2022-11-08: Ansible 7.0.0 beta1 – feature freeze

GENERAL NEWS UPDATES 🔈️

gotmax (He/Him) said

The Ansible Community Steering Committee has approved a change to the Collection Requirements re. SCM and release requirements. Collections were always required to tag releases, but we have clarified what tagging actually means. We have also explicitly stated that "collection artifacts released to Galaxy MUST be built from the sources that are tagged in the collection's git repository as that release." Please see the full change for more information.

samccann contributed

Ansible 2.3 documentation will redirect to /latest/ docs in a week. If you need 2.3 documentation, use the archive site at https://docs.ansible.com/ansible-prior-versions.html to access these docs.

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.

chadams contributed

Ansible 7.0.0a2 is out! ❤️ 🔗https://groups.google.com/g/ansible-announce/c/EI8cOKdBAxQ 💽You can install it by running the following command or download the release tarball directly from pypi:

pip install ansible==7.0.0a2 --user

$ ansible-community --version Ansible community version 7.0.0a2

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

Ansible-Core ↗ ⚡️

The ansible-core package contains the base engine and a small subset of modules and plugins. To see what's planned for the next release, look at the ansible-core roadmaps.

sivel shared

New release candidates: ansible-core 2.14.0rc1 - C'mon Everybody - this release candidate will become general availability release on 7 November 2022.

COLLECTION UPDATES 🪄

andersson007_ said

The lowlydba.sqlserver collection has passed the Collection inclusion procedure and will be included in the next minor release of Ansible. Thanks to lowlydba and briantist for the contribution!

felixfontein shared

community.general 5.8.0 (changelog) has been released with new features and bugfixes. This is the last 5.x.0 minor release, from now on there will only be bugfix releases 5.8.x. The next minor/major release of the collection will be version 6.0.0 on November 7th.

itsbryantp shared

The ibm.ds8000 v1.1.0 collection is now available on Ansible Galaxy! This release adds new support to handle more mainframe oriented use cases such as managing LSS volumes and CKD alias volumes. Check out the following blog for more information.

itsbryantp said

The first release of the ibm.csm v1.0.0 collection is now available on Ansible Galaxy! The IBM Copy Services Manager collection provides modules for managing your CSM servers and sessions. Learn more in the following blog.

itsbryantp shared

The ibm_zos_core collection 1.3.6 is available on Ansible Galaxy and Automation Hub! This release includes several bug fixes and support for ansible-core 2.11. See the release notes for the full list of updates.

itsbryantp shared

The ibm_zos_core 1.4.0-beta.2 collection is now available on Ansible Galaxy! This release includes several bug fixes, support for ansible-core 2.11, and significant architecture changes to the zos_copy module. See the release notes for more details.

Sagar Paul said

We had a major release for the following network collections

ansible.netcommon 4.0.0

Modules deprecated

napalm

net_banner

net_interface

net_l2_interface

net_l3_interface

net_linkagg

net_lldp

net_lldp_interface

net_logging

net_static_route

net_system

net_user

net_vlan

net_vrf

cisco.iosxr 4.0.0

Modules deprecated -

iosxr_interface

arista.eos 6.0.0

Modules deprecated -

eos_interface

eos_l2_interface

eos_l3_interface

eos_linkagg

eos_static_route

eos_vlan

cisco.nxos 4.0.0

Modules deprecated -

nxos_acl

nxos_acl_interface

nxos_interface

nxos_interface_ospf

nxos_l2_interface

nxos_l3_interface

nxos_linkagg

nxos_lldp

nxos_ospf

nxos_ospf_vrf

nxos_smu

nxos_static_route

nxos_vlan

cisco.ios 4.0.0

Modules deprecated -

ios_interface

ios_l2_interface

ios_l3_interface

ios_static_route

ios_vlan

cisco.asa 4.0.0

Modules deprecated -

asa_acl

asa_og

vyos.vyos 4.0.0

Modules deprecated -

vyos_interface

vyos_l3_interface

vyos_linkagg

vyos_lldp

vyos_lldp_interface

vyos_static_route

junipernetworks.junos 4.0.0

Modules deprecated -

junos_interface

junos_l2_interface

junos_l3_interface

junos_linkagg

junos_lldp

junos_lldp_interface

junos_static_route

junos_vlan

This release also drops support for connection: local and provider dictionary.

abuzachis contributed

amazon.aws 5.1.0 has been released with some minor changes, bugfixes, security fixes and deprecated features.

mariolenz contributed

It looks like the cisco.nso collection is effectively unmaintained. According to the current community guidelines for collections, we consider removing it in a future version of the Ansible community package. Please see Unmaintained collection: cisco.nso for more information or to announce that you’re interested in taking over the maintenance of (a fork of) cisco.nso.

At least one month after this announcement appears here and in the collection’s issue tracker, the Ansible Community Steering Committee will vote on whether this collection is considered unmaintained and will be removed, or whether it will be kept. If it will be removed, this will happen earliest in Ansible 9.0.0. Please note that you can still manually install the collection with ansible-galaxy collection install cisco.nso even when it has been removed from Ansible.

HELP WANTED 🙏

Don Naro contributed

We're looking to start a DaWGs Open Hour in EMEA to discuss all aspects of Ansible community documentation. Contributors and interested parties can fill in this short survey to indicate their time preference and submit discussion topics: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NKTKV6W

andersson007_ said

The following collection inclusion requests are waiting for your review:

dellemc.unity

See the process description to learn how to do it.

If you have any questions, just ping andersson007 on Matrix in the #community:ansible.com room or on Libera.Chat IRC in the #ansible-community channel or directly.

Please help the community extend the Ansible package!

PROPOSALS - DISCUSS AND VOTE! 🗳️

felixfontein said

There is a discussion and a community vote on a concrete proposal to adjust the release cadence of Ansible 7 to couple it more closely to ansible-core releases. The basic idea is to release Ansible 1-2 days after ansible-core is released. For Ansible 7.0.0, the idea is to release it two weeks after ansible-core 2.14.0 if no major issue is found, so we have time for one beta release (directly after 2.14.0) and one release candidate (one week after 2.14.0). See the discussion and the summary in the vote for details.

felixfontein shared

There is a discussion in community-topics on how to mark private plugins in a collection. One proposal is to use a leading underscore in the plugin name to indicate private (outside ansible.builtin, there it means deprecated). One potential problem is that this notation was used by some tools as a deprecation mark before, though this use was very inconsistent. If you have any ideas, are involved in projects that would be affected by this, or just interested in the topic in general, please take a look and participate in the discussion!

COMMUNITY UPDATES 👂️

maxamillion said

Ansible Edge Working Group

This is a brand new working group focusing on bringing Ansible Automation to Edge Computing!

We had the good fortune of initially launching during Ansible Contributor Summit, and we were represented in the Day 2 Keynote on the AnsibleFest main-stage.

Please come learn a little about the Edge Working Group and join us in our #edge:ansible.com Matrix room (bridged to #ansible-edge on irc.libera.chat).

Gwmngilfen contributed

During the fun of AnsibleFest, cybette and maxamillion had a chance to sit with theCUBE and do an interview on the Ansible community, Contributor Summit, Matrix, Hacktoberfest and more. Give it a watch!

gotmax (He/Him) contributed

Join us in #ansible-packaging (Libera.chat) / #packaging:ansible.com (Matrix) to discuss packaging of projects in the Ansible ecosystem, whether it's ansible-core, collections, or ARA. Linux distribution package maintainers and anyone else interested in Ansible packaging is welcome. Currently, we have packagers from Void Linux, CentOS, Fedora, and EPEL, and we'd love to have more!

gotmax (He/Him) said

In addition to the ansible community package and ansible-core, we have packaged almost 20 standalone collections in Fedora, many of which are also packaged for EPEL! We already have a good number of packaged collections, so I figured it was time to write up some formal guidelines. I have submitted draft Ansible Collection Guidelines to the Fedora Packaging Committee for inclusion in the official Fedora Packaging Guidelines site. These guidelines outline the best practices for packaging Ansible Collections in Fedora and how to use the ansible-packaging RPM macros. There's already a few people involved, but we'd love to have others. Anyone interested in how they can get involved or who have any other questions, comments, or feedback should join #ansible-packaging (Libera.chat) / #packaging:ansible.com (Matrix).

COMMUNITY EVENTS AND MEETUPS 📅

If you've missed out on some of the AnsibleFest action last week, fear not! You can view the keynotes from day 1 and day 2, as well as access a wealth of on-demand sessions in the AnsibleFest Content Hub. In addition, check out the Best of Fest 2022 along with AnsibleFest 2022 Newsroom for more updates.

We will also share a recap of the Ansible Contributor Summit, along with the Contributor Survey, in the next issue of The Bullhorn. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, there are some local Ansible meetup events happening! Ansible Toronto will be doing an AnsibleFest Recap, while Ansible Atlanta will be talking about Execution Environments, from dev to prod. Check out the details in the links 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!