Ansible 6.3.0 has been Released!

[Christian Adams]

Hi all,

We're happy to announce that the Ansible 6.3.0 package has been released!

Ansible 6.3.0 will include ansible-core 2.13.3 as well as a curated set of
Ansible collections to provide a vast number of modules and plugins.

This is a major version update from Ansible 5.x which included
ansible-core 2.12 and there may be backwards incompatibilities in the
core playbook language.

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

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

```
$ pip install ansible==6.3.0 --user
```

The sources for this release can be found here:

Release tarball:
https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/a/ansible/ansible-6.3.0.tar.gz
SHA256: d5fa9fc15a8d45c8d5247a9645b0b48f995d735b12c4da655666d48506273526

Wheel package: https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/py3/a/ansible/ansible-6.3.0-py3-none-any.whl
SHA256: 74f5c3bd7441dcdb7cace8a3c2a44b0be7002be346bf8137e5c67fd8ba743fd3

What's new in Ansible 6
---------------------------

* New command-line utility “ansible-community” is added in Ansible 6 to check the installed version of Ansible Community package.

```
$ ansible-community --version
Ansible community version 6.3.0
```

* Python wheels are now available for both Ansible 6 and ansible-core
2.13.x, resulting in significantly improved installation performance.

* In addition, Ansible 6 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 2.13 installed by this release of
ansible is available here:
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/stable-2.13/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.13.rst

* Collections which have opted into being a part of the Ansible-6
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 6.3.0 ?
---------------------------------------------------------

* Maintenance releases of Ansible 6.x will occur approximately every
three weeks (Ansible 6.3.0, Ansible 6.4.0, etc) until the release of
Ansible 7.0.0. They will contain bugfixes and new features but no
backwards incompatibilities.

* Please note that the release of ansible-core 2.13 coincides with the end-of-life of ansible 2.9 and ansible-base 2.10:
https://groups.google.com/g/ansible-announce/c/kegIH5_okmg/

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 6 with older releases of ansible-core
-----------------------------------------------------------------

Ansible 6 includes ansible-core 2.13.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!

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 4:23 PM Christian Adams <cha...@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> We're happy to announce that the Ansible 6.3.0 package has been released!
>
> Ansible 6.3.0 will include ansible-core 2.13.3 as well as a curated set of
> Ansible collections to provide a vast number of modules and plugins.

I've updated my RPM building tools at
https://github.com/nkadel/ansiblerepo to match.

Isn't it time to decouple ansible-core and ansible? The 100 or so
third party modules embedded in the tarball called "ansible" do not
share the same versions for ansible-core as each other, and
ansible-core is still not included as part of the "ansible" tarball.
It is installed separately, often as a "pip install" dependency.

And as I've mentioned before, the "ansible" tarball does not contain
"ansible". It's a bundle of roughly 100 third party modules from the
ansible galaxy collection, more properly called "ansible_collections",
and the actual ansible executable script and critical modules are in
"ansible-core". This has been going on since the split, which frankly
was done backwards. and is as a result very confusing. Frankly, most
sites should ignore the ansible tarball. It's too big, and individual
components are too erratically maintained, to rely on for high
reliability, and the individual ansible galaxy collection modules
should be installed only as needed and updated as a checklist, not as
a bundle. or as a monolithic package.

ansible-core contains the actual executable tools and critical python
modules, and frankly should always be installed first. I've previously
suggested renaming the "ansible" tarball to an "ansible_collections"
tarball, which would make a lot more sense given that it installs all
of its actual content in "ansible_collections" rooted python
directories, and only "ansible-core" installs in "ansible" rooted
directories.

> This is a major version update from Ansible 5.x which included
> ansible-core 2.12 and there may be backwards incompatibilities in the
> core playbook language.

As I've pointed out repeatedly: the ansible package has *never*
ansible-core since the very confusing ansible split, back at ansible
2.9, "ansible" now has a listed pip installation requirement of
ansible-core which can and should be ignored in most environments
They are linked but not directly dependent packages. Please, stop
using this confusing language.

It would ease deployment for many if they simply installed
ansible-core directly, and entirely ignored the bulky and "ansible"
tarball, installing only the particular ansible galaxy collection
modules they need if and as needed. For most, the "ansible" tarball is
no longer an efficient or effective use of their resources.