New release: ansible-core 2.16.0 - All My Love

[Matt Martz]

Hi all- we're happy to announce the general release of:

ansible-core 2.16.0


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

$ python3 -m pip install --user ansible-core==2.16.0

The release artifacts can be found here:

# Built Distribution: 2247142 bytes
# SHA256: 6b4870ac65b708953e1509b8ccca669731a17d2beadabd8208c9f90d189058ca
https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/2f/ab/6357d8f3c17fec8c49c6119968292c14d3383c631bd900f6dc5593eb64a9/ansible_core-2.16.0-py3-none-any.whl
# Source Distribution: 3155083 bytes
# SHA256: b4a6c60fbc2f51e3ae68ec733c931ef957a04d7c8c92aa39242990b0f8adf149
https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/6c/12/c0aec5705ee693986f62755fd3abbaf42ff3963980e42add4a2986ad79b0/ansible-core-2.16.0.tar.gz


What's new
----------

This release is a major release. The full changelog can be found here:

https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v2.16.0/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.16.rst

Important Changes:

* Drop Python 3.5 support for module execution
* Drop Python 3.9 support for controller
* Add Python 3.12 support
* Preserve display context when proxying display over the queue
* Update TaskExecutor to not unnecessarily establish persistent ansible-connection when not needed


Schedule for future releases
----------------------------

The next release candidate is planned to be released on 27 November 2023. The next general availability release will be one week after.


Porting help
------------

If you discover any errors or if any of your working playbooks break when you upgrade, please use the following link to report the regression:

https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/new/choose

In your issue, be sure to mention the version that works and the one that doesn't.

Thanks!