Ansible News - Ansible Core 2.14.2 and Ansible 7.2.0

Analyzing the latest release notes of Ansible Core 2.14.2 and Ansible 7.2.0, a summary of the major changes, and the Ansible 2023 Roadmap.

February 4, 2023

Access the Complete Video Course and Learn Quick Ansible by 200+ Practical Lessons

#ansible #news #redhat #2023 #enterprise #ansible-enterprise #ansible-core #ansible-community #pip #linux #installation #install #roadmap

Welcome to a new episode of the Ansible Pilot from Luca Berton. The big news of the last week of January 23 is the release of Two different versions of Ansible: Ansible Core 2.14.2 and Ansible Community 7.2.0. Basically, these are bug-fix releases. Let me quickly remind you that the Ansible Core contains the Ansible framework and the ansible.builtin collection. Nothing else. Whereas the Ansible community includes a lot of other collections. For example, interactive with cloud providers (Amazon, Google, Azure) and also the community-generated collection and Red Hat vendor partners.

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 bigger and has a lot 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 probably would like the Ansible community for her. When you are developing or you need a full overview of the answerable project, Also, you can increase velocity because each piece of the Ansible Core and the collections can be released asynchronously. So, not at the same time as Ansible.

The Best Resources For Ansible

Certifications

The Linux Foundation Linux Performance Tuning - Build a broad toolkit to optimize Linux performance from the kernel up

Coursera Pro - Unlimited access to 7,000+ world-class courses, hands-on projects, and job-ready certificate programs—all included in your subscription

Video Course

Udemy: Learn Ansible Automation in 250+examples & practical lessons: Learn Ansible with some real-life examples of how to use the most common modules and Ansible Playbook

Printed Book

eBooks

The Ansible Core release 2.14.2 - released 30th January 2023

The Ansible Core release 2.14.2 was a maintenance release on January 30th, 2023. Thank you, Matt Martz, for announcing the release of Ansible Core 2.14.2 (New releases: ansible-core 2.14.2 https://groups.google.com/g/ansible-project/c/zgXWtNoA5LM) in the Ansible mailing list. This is a maintenance release of the Ansible codename “C’mon, everybody”. Reading the Ansible Release Notes (ansible-core 2.14 “C’mon Everybody” Release Notes https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v2.14.2/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.14.rst ), we can see that this release is almost a bugfix release. Let me remind you that Ansible 2.14 was first introduced in November 2022. If I remember correctly, two weeks before the release of Ansible Automation Platform version 2.3. So basically, this is the foundation, and the most important change is the requirement of at least Python version 3.9. This requirement reaks completely the compatibility with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7. I could notice that there was a lot of work on the ansible-testcommand line tool. This is part of the Red Hat strategy to improve the Developer journey. This tool is specifically designed to test Ansible Collection. That is quite interesting, so it’s worth taking a test in our laboratory and the Ansible blog article about it and how to test and write custom code (Introduction to ansible-test https://www.ansible.com/blog/introduction-to-ansible-test ).

How to install Ansible Core 2.14.2?

Via the PIP python package manager. The PyPI website is already up-to-date. We can download the Ansible Core for the most modern operating system by simply typing in the terminal the following command:

$ pip install ansible-core

In some systems, we need to use the pip3 command line tool instead, part of the python3-pip package. Taking a look at the package history, we saw that, as usual, a release candidate was available since the 21st of January, 2023, just one week before the official release. This is a common practice of the previous Ansible Core release, 2.14.1, released on the 7th of November, 2022. Are you curious about the next thing? As we can see, the Ansible Core Team is already working on the Ansible Core 2.15 roadmap (https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/devel/roadmap/ROADMAP_2_15.html). The expected delivery date is for April 2023. We look forward to trying the next release candidate!

The Best Resources For Ansible

Certifications

The Linux Foundation Linux Performance Tuning - Build a broad toolkit to optimize Linux performance from the kernel up

Coursera Pro - Unlimited access to 7,000+ world-class courses, hands-on projects, and job-ready certificate programs—all included in your subscription

Video Course

Udemy: Learn Ansible Automation in 250+examples & practical lessons: Learn Ansible with some real-life examples of how to use the most common modules and Ansible Playbook

Printed Book

eBooks

The Ansible Community release 7.2.0 - released 31th January 2023

As usual, the day after the release of the Ansible Core, the Ansible Community package is available as well. This includes the Ansible Core package and some “selected” collections from the full list of the collections available. Thank you, Christian Adams, for announcing the release with Ansible Core 2.14.2 (Ansible 7.2.0 has been Released! https://groups.google.com/g/ansible-project/c/7QO1vXfPkic) in the Ansible mailing list.

The major changes are the same as in Ansible Core 2.14:

Ansible 7 requires Python 3.9 on the controller, same as ansible-core 2.14.

Variables are now evaluated lazily; only when they are actually used. For example, in ansible-core 2.14 an expression {{ defined_variable or undefined_variable }} does not fail on undefined_variable if the first part of or is evaluated to True as it is not needed to evaluate the second part. Collections added to Ansible 7:
ibm.spectrum_virtualize (version 1.9.0)
inspur.ispim (version 1.0.1)
purestorage.fusion (version 1.1.1)
vultr.cloud (version 1.1.0)

How to install Ansible Community 7.2.0?

We can install the ansible package using the PIP python package manager. The PyPI website is already up-to-date. We can download the Ansible package for the most modern operating system by simply typing in the terminal the following command:

$ pip install ansible

In some systems, we need to use the pip3 command line tool instead; part of the python3-pip package. The release cycle follows exactly the same as Ansible Core 2.14 package.

Recap

Like every year, Red Hat released a bug fix release of the Ansible Core 2.14.2 on 30th January 2023 and Ansible community packages 7.2.0 on 31st January 2023. These are more maintenance releases and bug fixing that also improved the ansible-test command line utility. The major disruption is the adoption of Python 3.9. On the one hand, it breaks the compatibility with some old operating systems based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7. On the other hand, it fully embraces the latest technology having as a side effect a most modern codebase that runs faster, taking advantage of the latest Python performance feature. The next release cycle is in April 2023, expecting the newest innovation with Ansible Core 2.15.0 and Ansible community package 8.0.0. Thank you so much. Have a great automation day. I’m looking forward to hearing your story about the automation of tomorrow. Have fun have a good day. And let’s automate more with Ansible.

Subscribe to the YouTube channel, Medium, and Website, X (formerly Twitter) to not miss the next episode of the Ansible Pilot.