Ansible 2.2.1 RC1 is ready for testing

[James Cammarata]

Hi all, we're very happy to announce that Ansible 2.2.1 RC1 is ready for testing!

Some bug fix highlights:

* Fixes a bug where undefined variables in with_* loops would cause a task failure even if the when condition would cause the task to be skipped.

* Fixes multiple bugs related to field/attribute inheritance in nested blocks and includes, as well as task iteration logic during failures.

* Fixes a bug with "vault rekey" when using environment variables to specify the vault password file.

* Fixes a bug in which include_vars was not working with failed_when.

* Fixes several bugs related to properly incrementing the failed count in the host statistics.

* Fixes a bug with listening handlers which did not specify a `name` field.

* Fixes a bug with the `play_hosts` internal variable, so that it properly reflects the current list of hosts.

* Fixes a bug related to the v2_playbook_on_start callback method and legacy (v1) plugins.

* Fixes an openssh related process exit race condition, related to the fact that connections using ControlPersist do not close stderr.

* Improvements and fixes to OpenBSD fact gathering.

* More python 3 fixes.

Modules:

* Fixes a bug where the pip module was not properly installing things/using the wrong pip executable when run from inside a venv.

* Fixes for the service/systemd module.

* Fixes for several packaging modules, including apt, yum and dnf.

* Several fixes for bugs in the cron module.

How do you get it?

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The tar.gz of the release can be found here:

http://releases.ansible.com/ansible/ansible-2.2.1.0-0.1.rc1.tar.gz

SHA256: ab291167fba14c0ae0cae4c30671dd0acf097ecf99128daea0f4831b5bc748e1

You can also test against the git repository as follows:

$ git clone https://github.com/ansible/ansible.git

$ cd ansible

$ git checkout v2.2.1.0-0.1.rc1

$ git submodule update --init

You can then source our testing script:

$ . hacking/env-setup

or you can build your own .tar.gz (output will be dist/ansible-2.2.1.0.tar.gz):

$ make sdist

If you discover any errors, or if you see any regressions from playbooks which work on 1.9.x and prior, please open a Github issue and be sure to mention you're testing against this release candidate.

Thanks!

James Cammarata

Ansible Lead/Sr. Principal Software Engineer

Ansible by Red Hat

twitter: @thejimic, github: jimi-c