Release announcement : Ansible Community Package 8.1.0

[Anwesha Das]

Hello everyone,

We're happy to announce the release of the Ansible 8.1.0 package!

Ansible 8.1.0 includes ansible-core 2.15.1 as well as a curated set of
Ansible collections that provide a vast number of modules and plugins.

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

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

`$ python3 -m pip install ansible==8.1.0 --user`

The sources for this release can be found here:

Release tarball:

https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/87/d7/322dd9d88261e56862ade2f9b9c125d0de648857e755d7177500272d2e05/ansible-8.1.0.tar.gz

SHA256:

91f20b5bfcf5f298533c174a93881e00bc9e6b41411464f44c054a38d716a56a

Wheel package:

https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/01/43/b5620e57e14a84d9bf257ba4797c2abfa13f7c3be04bc8cd35f86d2e6a2d/ansible-8.1.0-py3-none-any.whl

SHA256:

3bcfb06f2d65edc1c4876df33a52d4469d48d4fe534f1d8ffa196f1b0d81ab0e

Some important details
-----------------------

Python wheels are now available for both Ansible 8 and ansible-core
2.15.x, resulting in significantly improved installation performance.

In addition, Ansible 8 no longer installs some unnecessary files from
the included Ansible collections such as tests or hidden files and
directories 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 2.15.1 installed by this release of
Ansible 8 can be found here:
https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/v2.15.1/changelogs/CHANGELOG-v2.15.rst

Collections which have opted-in to being a part of the Ansible 8
unified changelog will have an entry on this page:
https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/blob/main/8/CHANGELOG-v8.rst

For collections which have not opted-in to the unified changelog, you
may find more information on https://galaxy.ansible.com or the
collection source repository. For example, the community.crypto
collection is available 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 8.1.0?
---------------------------------------------------------

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

A unified porting guide for collections that have opted-in is available here:
https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/devel/porting_guides/porting_guide_8.html

Getting collection updates from Ansible 8 with older releases of ansible-core
--------------------------------------

Ansible 8 includes ansible-core 2.15.x. Based on your requirements,
you can get collection updates as they ship in the Ansible "batteries
included" package while continuing to use older versions of
ansible-core.

An ansible-galaxy requirements file based on the collections from
Ansible 8 has been made available for this use case:
https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/blob/main/8/galaxy-requirements.yaml

After you download the requirements file, the collections can be
installed by running this command:

"ansible-galaxy collection install -r galaxy-requirements.yaml"

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

Cheers
Ansible Community Team

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

On Thu, Jun 22, 2023 at 5:16 PM Anwesha Das <anw...@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> We're happy to announce the release of the Ansible 8.1.0 package!
>
> Ansible 8.1.0 includes ansible-core 2.15.1 as well as a curated set of
> Ansible collections that provide a vast number of modules and plugins.

Please: stop claiming this. ansible-core is a required dependency, not
contained within the ansible packages. Pip install builds the
dependency, but it can be built and installed quite independently of
the "ansible" distribution.

Nico Kadel-Garcia

> --
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[Anwesha Das]

Hello Nico,

On Fri, Jun 23, 2023 at 12:13 PM Nico Kadel-Garcia <nka...@gmail.com> wrote:

<snipped>

> Please: stop claiming this. ansible-core is a required dependency, not
> contained within the ansible packages. Pip install builds the
> dependency, but it can be built and installed quite independently of
> the "ansible" distribution.

Thank you for pointing this out. I truly appreciate it.

I will edit the wording of the release announcements to match to what
happens, under the hood, technically. How does this sound?

```
Ansible 8.1.0 requires latest version of ansible-core 2.15 and
includes a curated set of
Ansible collections that provides a vast number of modules and plugins.
```
<snipped>

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Cheers,
Anwesha

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

On Wed, Jun 28, 2023 at 4:44 AM Anwesha Das <anw...@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> Hello Nico,
>
> On Fri, Jun 23, 2023 at 12:13 PM Nico Kadel-Garcia <nka...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> <snipped>
>
> > Please: stop claiming this. ansible-core is a required dependency, not
> > contained within the ansible packages. Pip install builds the
> > dependency, but it can be built and installed quite independently of
> > the "ansible" distribution.
>
> Thank you for pointing this out. I truly appreciate it.
>
> I will edit the wording of the release announcements to match to what
> happens, under the hood, technically. How does this sound?

That sounds *fabulous*. Thank you very much. The ansible documentation
is a bit vague on the distinction as well.

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/installation_guide/intro_installation.html#installing-and-upgrading-ansible

If you're revising the release or installation notes, perhaps you
could mention the python version requirement? The current ansib-core
2.15 or later requires python 3.11 or later. And some supported
systems, like RHEL 7, don't have such recent python as a supported
option. It's why I would recommend using RHEL 8 or 9 for ansible
servers.

[Felix Fontein]

Hi Anwesha,

before we start modifying the announcement, can we please first have it
in a public GH repo - say
https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/tree/main/docs
- and then discuss these changes in a PR so it's clear to everyone
involved what exactly the diff is?

Cheers,
Felix

[Nico Kadel-Garcia]

On Wed, Jun 28, 2023 at 8:15 AM 'Felix Fontein' via Ansible Project
<ansible...@googlegroups.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Anwesha,
>
> before we start modifying the announcement, can we please first have it
> in a public GH repo - say
> https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/tree/main/docs
> - and then discuss these changes in a PR so it's clear to everyone
> involved what exactly the diff is?
>
> Cheers,
> Felix

Felix, the provenance of the "ansible" package is really a bundle of
"ansible galaxy collections", It's not from a single project. It's
built from more than 100 distinct modules, most of which have their
own git repo. Take a look at this to see the build tool used to
generate that tarball.:

https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/blob/main/8/ansible-8.1.0.deps

And yes, this is very confusing, especially because ansible-core comes
from the mismatched git repo name:

https://github.com/ansible/ansible

Can we just fix the one thing right now?

Nico Kadel-Garicia

> On Wed, 28 Jun 2023 10:44:09 +0200
> Anwesha Das <anw...@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> > Hello Nico,
> >
> > On Fri, Jun 23, 2023 at 12:13 PM Nico Kadel-Garcia <nka...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > <snipped>
> >
> > > Please: stop claiming this. ansible-core is a required dependency,
> > > not contained within the ansible packages. Pip install builds the
> > > dependency, but it can be built and installed quite independently of
> > > the "ansible" distribution.
> >
> > Thank you for pointing this out. I truly appreciate it.
> >
> > I will edit the wording of the release announcements to match to what
> > happens, under the hood, technically. How does this sound?
> >
> > ```
> > Ansible 8.1.0 requires latest version of ansible-core 2.15 and
> > includes a curated set of
> > Ansible collections that provides a vast number of modules and
> > plugins. ```
> > <snipped>
> >
> > Looking forward to hearing from you.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Anwesha
> >
>

> --
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> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ansible-project/20230628141500.405e95f7%40rovaniemi.

[Felix Fontein]

Hi Nico,

> Felix, the provenance of the "ansible" package is really a bundle of
> "ansible galaxy collections", It's not from a single project. It's
> built from more than 100 distinct modules, most of which have their
> own git repo. Take a look at this to see the build tool used to
> generate that tarball.:

I'm fully aware of how the ansible PyPI package is built.

> Can we just fix the one thing right now?

We have two things here: we have the ansible PyPI package, and we have
Ansible as the 'thing' that users use.

The new suggestion is perfect from a technical point of view, when
talking about the ansible PyPI package. But it is NOT perfect when
looking at Ansible, as described by the Ansible docsite
(https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/) and the Ansible changelog
(https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/blob/main/8/CHANGELOG-v8.rst).

I'm against changing something so that one aspect of it is better, but
another gets worse, without this being properly discussed first.

Cheers,
Felix