Ansible 2.4 — Ansible Documentation

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# Ansible 2.4

Core Engine Freeze and Module Freeze: 15 August 2017

Core and Curated Module Freeze: 15 August 2017

Community Module Freeze: 29 August 2017

Release Candidate 1 will be 06 September, 2017

Target: Mid-September 2017

Topics

- Ansible 2.4
  - Administrivia and Process
  - Python 2.4 and 2.5 support discontinuation
  - Python 3
  - Ansible-Config
  - Inventory
  - Facts
  - PluginLoader
  - Static Loop Keyword
  - Vault
  - Globalize Callbacks
  - Plugins
  - Group Priorities
  - Runtime Check on Modules for Blacklisting
  - Disambiguate Includes
  - Windows
  - AWS
  - Azure
  - Google Cloud Platform
  - Network Roadmap
  - Contributor Quality of Life

## Administrivia and Process

- Starting with 2.4, all items that are deprecated will be removed in 4 major releases unless otherwise stated.
  - For example: A module that is deprecated in 2.4 will be removed in 2.8

## Python 2.4 and 2.5 support discontinuation

- Ansible will not support Python 2.4 nor 2.5 on the target hosts anymore. Going forward, Python 2.6+ will be required on targets, as already is the case on the controller.

## Python 3

- Ansible Core Engine and Core modules will be tested on Python 3
  - All Core modules now have at least a smoketest integration test. Additional coverage is welcomed to find more bugs and prevent regressions.
- Communicate with Linux distros to provide Ansible running on Python 3
  - Python3 based Ansible packages are now available to run on Fedora Linux

## Ansible-Config

- Proposal found in ansible/proposals issue #35.
- Initial PR of code found in ansible/ansible PR #12797. (done)
- Per plugin configuration (depends on plugin docs below). (WIP)
- New yaml format for config (possibly pushed to future roadmap)
- Extend the ability of the current config system by adding an `ansible-config` command and add the following:
  - Dump existing config settings (working, fine tuning)
  - Update / write a config entry (pushed to future roadmap)
  - Show available options (ini entry, yaml, env var, etc) (working, fine tuning)

## Inventory

(done, needs docs) - Proposal found in ansible/proposals issue #41. - Current inventory is overly complex, non modular and mostly still a legacy from inception.

## Facts

- Configurable list of ‘fact modules’ for `gather_facts` (done)
- Fact gathering policy finer grained (done)
- Make `setup.py`/`facts` more pluggable (done)
- Improve testing of `setup.py`/`facts.py` (done)
- Namespacing fact variables (via a config option) implemented in ansible/ansible PR #18445. (done) Proposal found in ansible/proposals issue #17.

## PluginLoader

(pushed out to future release) - Over the past couple releases we’ve had some thoughts about how PluginLoader might be better structured

> - Load the loaders via an initialization function(), not when importing the module. (stretch goal, doesn’t impact the CLI)
> - Separate duties of `PluginLoader` from `PluginFinder`. Most plugins need both but Modules and Module_utils only need a PluginFinder
> - Write different `PluginFinder` subclasses for module_utils and perhaps Modules. Most Plugin types have a flattened namespace and are single python files. Modules include code that is not written in python. Module_utils are vastly different from the other Plugins as they maintain a hierarchical namespace and are multi-file.
> - Potentially split module_utils loader for python from module_utils loader for powershell. Currently we only support generic module_utils for python modules. The powershell modules always include a single, hardcoded powershell module_utils file. If we add generic module_utils for powershell, we’ll need to decide how to organize the code.

## Static Loop Keyword

- Pushed to 2.5
- Deprecate (not on standard deprecation cycle) `with_` in favor of `loop:`
- This `loop:` will take only a list
- Remove complexity from loops, lookups are still available to users
- Less confusing having a static directive vs a one that is dynamic depending on plugins loaded.

## Vault

- Support for multiple vault passwords. (done)
  - Each decrypted item should know which secret to request (done)
  - Support requesting credentials (password prompt) as callbacks
- Ability to open and edit file with encrypted vars deencrypted, and encrypt/format on save

## Globalize Callbacks

(pushed out to future release) - Make send_callback available to other code that cannot use it. - Would allow for ‘full formatting’ of output (see JSON callback) - Fixes static ‘include’ display problem

## Plugins

- Allow plugins to have embedded docs (like modules) (done)
- Update ansible-doc and website to generate docs from these ansible/ansible PR #22796. (ansible-doc working, todo:website)

## Group Priorities

(done) - Start using existing group priority variable to sort/merge group vars - Implementation for this in ansible/ansible PR #22580. - Documentation of group priority variable

## Runtime Check on Modules for Blacklisting

(pushed out to future release) - Filter on things like “supported_by” in module metadata - Provide users with an option of “warning, error or allow/ignore” - Configurable via ansible.cfg and environment variable

## Disambiguate Includes

- Create import_x for ‘static includes’ (import_task, import_playbook, import_role)
  - Any directives are applied to the ‘imported’ tasks
- Create include_x for ‘dynamic includes’ (include_task, include_role)
  - Any directives apply to the ‘include’ itself

## Windows

- New PS/.NET module API (in progress)
- Windows Nano Server support
- Windows module_utils pluginloader (done)
- Refactor duplicated module code into new module_utils files (in progress)
- Evaluate #Requires directives (existing and new: PS version, OS version, etc)
- Improve module debug support/persistence (done)
- Explore official DSC support (done)
- Explore module intermediate output
- Explore Powershell module unit testing (in progress)
- Explore JEA support (stretch)
- Extended become support with network/service/batch logon types
- Module updates
  - Split “Windows” category into multiple subs
  - Domain user/group management modules (done)
  - win_mapped_drive module (done)
  - win_hotfix (done)
  - win_updates rewrite to require become
  - win_package changes required to deprecate win_msi (done)
  - win_copy re-write (done)

## AWS

- Focus on pull requests for various modules
- Triage existing merges for modules
- Module work
  - elb-target-groups #19492, #24583. (done)
  - alb* #19491, #24584. (done)
  - ecs #20618. (in review process)
  - Data Pipelines #22878. (in review process)
  - VPN #24385. (in review process)
  - DirectConnect #26152. (connection module in review process, several more to come)

## Azure

- Expose endpoint overrides (done)
- Reformat/document module output to collapse internal API structures and surface important data (eg, public IPs, NICs, data disks) (pushed to future)
- Add load balancer module (in progress)
- Add Azure Functions module (in progress)

## Google Cloud Platform

- New Module: DataProc
- Support for Cross-Region HTTP Load Balancing
- New Module: GKE

## Network Roadmap

- Removal of `*_template` modules (done)
- Distributed Continuous Integration Infrastructure (done)
- RPC Connection Plugin (done)
- Module Work
  - Declarative intent modules (done)
  - OpenVSwitch (done)
  - Minimal Viable Platform Agnostic Modules (done)

## Contributor Quality of Life

- All Core and Curated modules will work towards having unit testing. (edit: integration and/or unit tests)
- More bot improvements!
  - Bot comments on PRs with details of test failures. (done)
- Test Infrastructure changes
  - Shippable + Bot Integration
    - Provide verified test results to the bot from Shippable so the bot can comment on PRs with CI failures. (done, compile and sanity tests only)
    - Enable the bot to mark PRs with `ci_verified` if all CI failures are verified. (done)
  - Windows Server 2016 Integration Tests
    - Restore Windows Server 2016 integration tests on Shippable.
      - Originally enabled during the 2.3 release cycle, but later disabled due to intermittent WinRM issues.
      - Depends on resolution of WinRM connection issues.
  - Windows Server Nano Integration Tests (pushed to future roadmap)
    - Add support to ansible-core-ci for Windows Server 2016 Nano and enable on Shippable.
    - This will use a subset of the existing Windows integration tests.
    - Depends on resolution of WinRM connection issues.
  - Windows + Python 3 Tests
    - Run basic Windows tests using Python 3 as the controller. (partially done, not all planned tests running yet)
    - Depends on resolution of WinRM Python 3 issues.
  - Cloud Integration Tests
    - Run existing cloud integration tests as part of CI for:
      - AWS (done)
      - Azure (done)
      - GCP (pushed to future roadmap)
    - Tests to be run only on cloud module (and module_utils) PRs and merges for the relevant cloud provider. (done)
  - Test Reliability
    - Further improve test reliability to reduce false positives on Shippable. (ongoing)
    - This continues work from the 2.3 release cycle.
  - Static Code Analysis
    - Further expand the scope and coverage of static analysis. (ongoing)
    - This continues work from the 2.3 release cycle.