Ansible 5.0.0b2 available for testing

[David Moreau Simard]

Hi all,

We're happy to announce that the Ansible 5.0.0 beta2 package is now available!

This version is based on the newly released ansible-core 2.12.0 which
is a major update from ansible-core 2.11.x used in Ansible 4.
There may be backwards incompatibilities in the core playbook language.
Please see the porting guide for details.

This is a beta release so we encourage people to use it to test that
their playbooks and workflows work with the upcoming major release.
Bugs can be reported to relevant trackers such as
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/ for ansible-core and the relevant
collection repositories for modules and plugins from Ansible
collections.

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

Due to a limitation in pip, if you are upgrading from Ansible 3 (or
earlier), you need to uninstall Ansible and Ansible Base before
installing Ansible 5:

```
$ pip uninstall ansible ansible-base
$ pip install ansible==5.0.0b2 --user
```

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

Ansible 5.0.0b2:
https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/a/ansible/ansible-5.0.0b2.tar.gz
SHA256: e248c12a7170aa26c5f6fe88e2addec1770b15a9c03dd085082d80506b43b43f


What's new in Ansible 5.0.0
---------------------------

* This version of Ansible is based on Ansible Core 2.12 which is a new
major update of the ansible-core package. It may contain backwards
incompatible changes to the playbook language and command line
programs. Please see the porting guide (linked at the bottom) for more
information.

* ansible-core-2.12 now requires Python 3.8 or greater on the
controller (where you run ansible-playbook).

* Support for python 2.6 for managed nodes is deprecated in
ansible-core 2.12 and will be removed in ansible-core 2.13 (around May
2022)

* Collections which have opted into being a part of the Ansible-5
unified changelog will have an entry on this page:
https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/blob/main/5/CHANGELOG-v5.rst

* For collections which have not opted into the unified changelog, you
may find more information on https://galaxy.ansible.com or their
source repository. For example, the community.crypto collection would
be found at https://galaxy.ansible.com/community/crypto and you can
find a link to the source repository under the "Repo" button at the
top right.

* The changelog for ansible-core 2.12.0 installed by this release of
ansible is available here:
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/stable-2.12/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.12.rst

What's the schedule for new Ansible releases after 5.0.0b2 ?
---------------------------------------------------------

* The Ansible-5 final release is expected on 2021-11-30. For the full
release schedule, including dates for other pre-releases, see the
roadmap page: https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/devel/roadmap/COLLECTIONS_5.html

* Maintenance releases of Ansible 5.x will occur approximately every
three weeks (Ansible 5.1.0, Ansible 5.2.0, etc) until the release of
Ansible 6.0.0. They will contain bugfixes and new features but no
backwards incompatibilities.

* Except for ansible-2.9.x, older versions of ansible are no longer
seeing maintenance releases. If there is a desire for maintenance
releases of older versions, drop by a Community Working Group Meeting
to discuss how you can help:
https://github.com/ansible/community/tree/main/meetings#wednesdays

* The last expected release of Ansible 4.x will be 4.10 around
December 14th 2021.

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

A unified porting guide for collections which have opted-in is available here:
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/devel/porting_guides/porting_guide_5.html

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