Release announcement: Ansible Community Package 8.6.0

[Carol Chen]

Hello everyone,

We're happy to announce the release of the Ansible 8.6.0 package!

Ansible 8.6.0 includes ansible-core 2.15.6 as well as a curated set of
Ansible collections that provide a vast number of modules and plugins.

How to get it
------------------

This release is available on PyPI and can be installed with pip:

`$ python3 -m pip install ansible==8.6.0 --user`

The sources for this release can be found here:

Release tarball:

https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/50/d4/97b8f6d10c6881c161d8677850062c9d8d4838ef8a491f34779c12253278/ansible-8.6.0.tar.gz

SHA256:

95f4e593274d59d53f36f62207535b7d272adc2701ac7a0ed7af6a6d81637a60

Wheel package:

https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/74/ef/54a04b6abbeeb88689bbb13eb66304733e98dc433a1ec6106d01b1492f67/ansible-8.6.0-py3-none-any.whl

SHA256:

6adf5a8f3f13127c2a1e3554d484aac169c41427507f73f9b6340864cada37ea

Some important details
--------------------------------

Python wheels are now available for both Ansible 8 and ansible-core
2.15 resulting in significantly improved installation performance.

In addition, Ansible 8 does not install some unnecessary files from
the included Ansible collections such as tests or hidden files and
directories. This further improves installation performance and
reduces the size on disk. These files are still available in the
source tarball if needed.

Collections which have opted-in to being a part of the Ansible 8
unified changelog will have an entry on this page:

https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/blob/main/8/CHANGELOG-v8.rst

For collections which have not opted-in to the unified changelog, you
may find more information on

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections

source repository. For example, the community.crypto collection is
available at

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/community/crypto/index.html

and you can find a link to the source repository under the
"Repository(Sources)" button.

The changelog for ansible-core 2.15.6 installed by this release of
Ansible 8 can be found here:

https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v2.15.6/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.15.rst

What's the schedule for new Ansible releases after 8.6.0?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next release roadmap can be found at

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/devel/roadmap/ansible_roadmap_index.html

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You can find all past Bullhorn issues on the official wiki page:

https://github.com/ansible/community/wiki/News#the-bullhorn

Join the new Ansible Community Forum to follow along and participate
in all the project and release related discussions and
announcements. Feel free to share your thoughts, feedback, ideas and concerns
there.

Register here to join the Ansible Forum:

https://forum.ansible.com

Porting Help
------------------

A unified porting guide for collections that have opted-in is available here:
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/devel/porting_guides/porting_guide_8.html

Getting collection updates from Ansible 8 with older releases of ansible-core
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ansible 8 includes ansible-core 2.15 Based on your requirements,
you can get collection updates as they ship in the Ansible "batteries
included" package while continuing to use older versions of
ansible-core.

An ansible-galaxy requirements file based on the collections from
Ansible 8 has been made available for this use case:

https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/blob/main/8/galaxy-requirements.yaml

After you download the requirements file, the collections can be
installed by running this command:

"ansible-galaxy collection install -r galaxy-requirements.yaml"

Special Thanks
---------------------

We would like to give a shoutout with a big THANK YOU to gotmax23 for making this release happen!

On behalf of the Ansible community, thank you and happy automating!

Cheers
Ansible Community Team