Ansible Getting Started Course

Noteworthy Ansible Updates

Here are Ansible Updates since the course (grouped by Ansible release) and including some of the roadmap for what is coming. My notes here are the fastest way for me to get you updates and then I can modify the course as needed.

Distilled since course updated last:

• 👎 The vscode extension vscoss.vscode-ansible is deprecated (no hover help!) - this is the one I was using in the course. IIUC the URL pathing for modules have simply changed to reflect collection namespacing.
  • 👂 stay tuned for recommendations
• 👍 🎁 Collections are first class citizens!
  • 👍 Collections are replacing the prominence of modules!

  👀 Collections ~= namespaced modules+

  • 👀 unqualified module name - (such as file or copy) module's name without the collection prefix (namespace)
    • 📇 namespace - when I say this, think name space - a safe space 😷 for names!
      • 👹 like your network folder on the shared drive in high school, it's all yours but please don't go naming things in other people's folders!
    • fully qualified collection name (FQCN)
      • 👁 I predicted this (becuase FQDN) and then found it in the docs as a real term! That's great because my mind was clearly ready for it!
  • 👍 Since it would break the world, I predict that you will be able to use both unqualified and qualified module references for the foreseeable future.
  • 👀 Collections Index takes "Modules Index" spot on site index, but that's just gravy!
    • 👀 All Modules Index
      • 📖 Think if you could click "expand all" on the Collections Index or previousy on the All Plugins Index -
      • I like the new, organized all modules index, instead of a giant scrolling list! 😀
      • 📚 Modules Index - circa 2.9
      • 📚 Modules Index - circa 2.8
    • 🎁 Modules are just part of what can be distributed in a collection so it makes sense to relocate the indexes of modules into collections.

2.10

• Collections re-org
  • Perhaps the best resource I've found is this overview/guide to what's going on with collections
    • ansible-collections github org
  • Ansible version 2.10 shifted focus to collections for organization of modules and namespacing (avoiding collisions in multiple implementations)!
    • This is largely an organizational change to how Ansible content can be consumed, packaged and distributed for reuse.
    • First, there's nothing earthshattering as of 2.10!
      • module names are now namespaced and packaged elsewhere but its transparent as of 2.10 (and likely beyond)
      • you can still refer to non-namespaced module names
        • see plugin routing here: (a module is one of many types of plugins to ansible):
          • https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/builtin/index.html#plugins-in-ansible-builtin
          • code routing table:
            • https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/config/ansible_builtin_runtime.yml
              • This is a great scroll-through resource to see how things map and this is what maps the routing so your 2.9 playbooks just work in 2.10+
    • Second, I address this and my speculations in the course about the future of collections as "sunsetting" roles in many ways or taking over the distribution aspect and roles become a high level way to share content.
      • Now you can also share playbooks, plugins (modules, etc). This is much more robust and in many ways is a packagization of the core of ansible and the community of modules. And a proper namespacing mechanism that ties into distribution with Ansible Galaxy.

Python 2 is sunset

It will take time to move beyond distros and apps that still support 2.X but the 2.X build is EOL'd so that should wrap up quickly, especially given that this EOLing has been a decade or more in the works.

The nice thing is you can forget about 2.X/3.X issues and just move on to using ANsible whereas before the 2.X/3.X could trip you up. This said you can have parallel installs of 3.X versions that can cause trouble but less so than 2.X with the breaking language changes.