Welcome to a new episode of the Ansible Pilot from Luca Berton. The big news of the last week of April ‘23 is the release of the beta version of Ansible Core 2.15.0 beta 3. This time there wasn’t any Ansible Community release. Let me quickly remind you that the Ansible Core contains the Ansible framework and the ansible.builtin collection. Nothing else. At the same time, the Ansible Community includes a lot (76+) of other collections. For example, interactive with cloud providers (Amazon, Google, Azure) and also the community-generated collection and Red Hat vendor partners.

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Ansible Core vs Ansible Community

  • What’s the difference?

The size and amount of resources the Ansible Core is the smallest package. At the same time, the Ansible Community package is more extensive and has many more resources in the footprint. Why did the engineering team release two packages? Well, because sometimes you have a different use case. You want a smaller package for a specific workload. And you would like the Ansible community for her. When developing or needing a complete overview of the answerable project, you can also increase velocity because each piece of the Ansible Core and the collections can be released asynchronously. So, at a different time than Ansible.

The Ansible Core releases 2.15.0 beta 3 - released 17th April 2023

The Ansible Core release 2.15.0 beta three was released on April 17th, 2023. Thank you, Matt Martz, for announcing the release of Ansible Core 2.15.0 beta 3 (New releases: New release beta: ansible-core 2.15.0b3 https://groups.google.com/g/ansible-devel/c/gmesMFht1Wo) in the Ansible mailing list. This is a new major release of the Ansible codename “Ten Years Gone.” Reading the Ansible Release Notes (ansible-core 2.15 “Ten Years Gone” Release Notes https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v2.15.0b3/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.15.rst). The main news is the introduction of the Ansible dnf5 module to natively interact with the DNF5 package manager introduced since Fedora 39. This module will be complementary to the yum and dnf current module for Red Hat-like systems. Many changes were performed, especially for performance (paramiko library), bugfix some behavior of the Ansible copy module, to enhance the ansible-test command line tool, and for a better developer experience.

PIP installation

We can test the code installation via the PIP package manager, the Python package installer. For example, let’s create a “venv” virtual environment to test our Ansible beta version (“2.15.0b3”).

code

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install ansible-core==2.15.0b3
Collecting ansible-core==2.15.0b3

execution

lberton@Lucas-MacBook-Pro ansible-pilot % python3 -m venv venv
lberton@Lucas-MacBook-Pro ansible-pilot % source venv/bin/activate
(venv) lberton@Lucas-MacBook-Pro ansible-pilot % python3 -m pip install ansible-core==2.15.0b3
Collecting ansible-core==2.15.0b3
  Downloading ansible_core-2.15.0b3-py3-none-any.whl (2.2 MB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 2.2/2.2 MB 1.6 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Collecting jinja2>=3.0.0
  Downloading Jinja2-3.1.2-py3-none-any.whl (133 kB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 133.1/133.1 kB 1.6 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Collecting PyYAML>=5.1
  Downloading PyYAML-6.0-cp311-cp311-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (167 kB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 167.5/167.5 kB 1.6 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Collecting cryptography
  Downloading cryptography-40.0.2-cp36-abi3-macosx_10_12_universal2.whl (5.1 MB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 5.1/5.1 MB 1.6 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Collecting packaging
  Downloading packaging-23.1-py3-none-any.whl (48 kB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 48.9/48.9 kB 1.9 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Collecting resolvelib<1.1.0,>=0.5.3
  Downloading resolvelib-1.0.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (17 kB)
Collecting MarkupSafe>=2.0
  Downloading MarkupSafe-2.1.2-cp311-cp311-macosx_10_9_universal2.whl (17 kB)
Collecting cffi>=1.12
  Downloading cffi-1.15.1-cp311-cp311-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (174 kB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 174.2/174.2 kB 721.6 kB/s eta 0:00:00
Collecting pycparser
  Downloading pycparser-2.21-py2.py3-none-any.whl (118 kB)
     ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 118.7/118.7 kB 1.6 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Installing collected packages: resolvelib, PyYAML, pycparser, packaging, MarkupSafe, jinja2, cffi, cryptography, ansible-core
Successfully installed MarkupSafe-2.1.2 PyYAML-6.0 ansible-core-2.15.0b3 cffi-1.15.1 cryptography-40.0.2 jinja2-3.1.2 packaging-23.1 pycparser-2.21 resolvelib-1.0.1

[notice] A new release of pip is available: 23.0.1 -> 23.1
[notice] To update, run: pip install --upgrade pip
(venv) lberton@Lucas-MacBook-Pro ansible-pilot % venv/bin/ansible --version
ansible [core 2.15.0b3]
  config file = None
  configured module search path = ['/Users/lberton/.ansible/plugins/modules', '/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /Users/lberton/prj/gitlab/ansible-pilot/venv/lib/python3.11/site-packages/ansible
  ansible collection location = /Users/lberton/.ansible/collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections
  executable location = venv/bin/ansible
  python version = 3.11.3 (main, Apr  7 2023, 20:13:31) [Clang 14.0.0 (clang-1400.0.29.202)] (/Users/lberton/prj/gitlab/ansible-pilot/venv/bin/python3)
  jinja version = 3.1.2
  libyaml = True
(venv) lberton@Lucas-MacBook-Pro ansible-pilot % venv/bin/ansible-test --version
ansible-test version 2.15.0b3
(venv) lberton@Lucas-MacBook-Pro ansible-pilot %

Conclusion

Red Hat just released the beta 3 versions of the future major release of the Ansible Core 2.15.0 on 17th April 2023. No complementary Ansible Community has been released at the moment. These are more enhanced, especially for performance (paramiko library), bugfix some behavior of the Ansible copy module, to enhance the ansible-test command line tool, and for a better developer experience. The next release cycle is in May 2023, expecting the newest innovation with Ansible Core 2.15.0 and Ansible community package 8.0.0. Thank you so much. Have an excellent automation day. Save the date for the upcoming AnsibleFest 2023(https://www.redhat.com/en/summit/ansiblefest) in Boston, USA, 23rd–25th May 2023.

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