Ansible 7.3.0 has been Released!

[Anwesha Das]

Hello everyone,

We're happy to announce that the Ansible 7.3.0 package has been released!

Ansible 7.3.0 will include ansible-core 2.14 as well as a curated set of
Ansible collections to provide a vast number of modules and plugins.


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

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

```
$ python3 -m pip install ansible==7.3.0 --user
```

The sources for this release can be found here:

Release tarball:
https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/a/ansible/ansible-7.3.0.tar.gz
SHA256: 56c2fd97487b2cc83e39e895d8dfad8b2a5df34d490394a15735ebcfdc45f5be

Wheel package: https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/py3/a/ansible/ansible-7.3.0-py3-none-any.whl
SHA256: 5039bf0fe4cbb9dcc3dbefe464fe2fa7fe75d8548814f00c478d5fe90c3e3979

What's new in Ansible 7
---------------------------

* New command-line utility “ansible-community” is added in Ansible 7
to check the installed version of Ansible Community package.

```
$ ansible-community --version
Ansible community version 7.3.0
```

* Python wheels are now available for both Ansible 7 and ansible-core
2.14.x, resulting in significantly improved installation performance.

* In addition, Ansible 7 will no longer install some unnecessary files
from the included Ansible collections such as tests or hidden files &
directories in order to further improve installation performance and
reduce the size on disk. These files are still available in the source
tarball if necessary.

* The changelog for ansible-core 2.14 installed by this release of
ansible is available here:
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/stable-2.14/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.14.rst

* Collections which have opted into being a part of the Ansible-7
unified changelog will have an entry on this page:
https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/blob/main/6/CHANGELOG-v6.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.

What's the schedule for new Ansible releases after 7.3.0 ?
---------------------------------------------------------

For the all future release dates please follow the Bullhorn. The
Bullhorn is our newsletter for the Ansible contributor community.

Please subscribe to receive it :
https://ansible.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=56d874e027110e35dea0e03c1&id=d6635f5420

Read past issues on the official Bullhorn’s wiki page :
https://github.com/ansible/community/wiki/News#the-bullhorn

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_6.html

Getting collection updates from Ansible 7 with older releases of ansible-core
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Ansible 6 includes ansible-core 2.14.x and users have expressed an interest
in getting collection updates as they ship in the Ansible "batteries
included" package while keeping an older version of ansible-core based
on their needs and requirements.

An ansible-galaxy requirements file based on the collections from
Ansible 6 has been made available for this use case:
https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/blob/main/6/galaxy-requirements.yaml

Once the requirements file has been downloaded, the collections can be
installed by running:
"ansible-galaxy collection install -r galaxy-requirements.yaml"

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

Cheers,
Anwesha