ansible 8.0.0a1

Radically simple IT automation

Ansible

Ansible is a radically simple IT automation system. It handles configuration management, application deployment, cloud provisioning, ad-hoc task execution, network automation, and multi-node orchestration. Ansible makes complex changes like zero-downtime rolling updates with load balancers easy. More information on the Ansible website.

This is the ansible community package. The ansible python package contains a set of independent Ansible collections that are curated by the community, and it pulls in ansible-core. The ansible-core python package contains the core runtime and CLI tools, such as ansible and ansible-playbook, while the ansible package contains extra modules, plugins, and roles.

ansible follows semantic versioning. Each major version of ansible depends on a specific major version of ansible-core and contains specific major versions of the collections it includes.

Design Principles

• Have an extremely simple setup process and a minimal learning curve.

• Manage machines quickly and in parallel.

• Avoid custom-agents and additional open ports, be agentless by leveraging the existing SSH daemon.

• Describe infrastructure in a language that is both machine and human friendly.

• Focus on security and easy auditability/review/rewriting of content.

• Manage new remote machines instantly, without bootstrapping any software.

• Allow module development in any dynamic language, not just Python.

• Be usable as non-root.

• Be the easiest IT automation system to use, ever.

Use Ansible

You can install a released version of Ansible with pip or a package manager. See our Installation guide for details on installing Ansible on a variety of platforms.

Reporting Issues

Issues with plugins and modules in the Ansible package should be reported on the individual collection’s issue tracker. Issues with ansible-core should be reported on the ansible-core issue tracker.

Refer to the Communication page for a list of support channels if you need assistance from the community or are unsure where to report your issue.

Get Involved

• Read Community Information for ways to contribute to and interact with the project, including mailing list information and how to submit bug reports and code to Ansible or Ansible collections.

• Join a Working Group, an organized community devoted to a specific technology domain or platform.

• Talk to us before making larger changes to avoid duplicate efforts. This not only helps everyone know what is going on, but it also helps save time and effort if we decide some changes are needed.

• For a list of email lists, Matrix and IRC channels, and Working Groups, see the Communication page

Coding Guidelines

We document our Coding Guidelines in the Developer Guide. We also suggest you review:

• Developing modules checklist

• Collection contributor guide

Branch Info

• The Ansible package is a ‘batteries included’ package that brings in ansible-core and a curated set of collections. Ansible uses semantic versioning (for example, Ansible 5.6.0).

• The Ansible package has only one stable branch, called ‘latest’ in the documentation.

• See Ansible release and maintenance for information about active branches and their corresponding ansible-core versions.

• Refer to the ansible-build-data repository for the exact versions of ansible-core and collections that are included in each ansible release.

Roadmap

Based on team and community feedback, an initial roadmap will be published for a major version (example: 5, 6). The Ansible Roadmap details what is planned and how to influence the roadmap.

Authors

Ansible was created by Michael DeHaan and has contributions from over 4700 users (and growing). Thanks everyone!

Ansible is sponsored by Red Hat, Inc.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0 or later

See COPYING for the full license text.