Release Announcement of Ansible Community Package 8.0.0rc1

[Anwesha Das]

Hello everyone,

We're happy to announce the release of the Ansible 8.0.0rc1 package!

Ansible 8.0.0rc1 includes ansible-core 2.15.0 as well as a curated set of
Ansible collections that 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==8.0.0rc1 --user`

The sources for this release can be found here:

Release tarball:
https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/3a/ff/9e78cf60fccc22c8b431d9469e0e8006ee084e0ae57faba003e5349b0946/ansible-8.0.0rc1.tar.gz

SHA256:
84ef735f5cc8acd9b9a8b594dd1825f216584b5a82e06636e55897d6ef0527e8

Wheel package:
https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/9b/92/2cb4c3746467db4102db2c82ab53ce68e5d49251dd9a68f240bf680c831c/ansible-8.0.0rc1-py3-none-any.whl

SHA256:
b402d4f566b81428a9fdb817081fb4e33b55c43c3691faf6fe3178a50e5324fd


What's new in Ansible 8
-----------------------

This is `Release Candidate 1` for Ansible 8.0.0.

Collections added to Ansible 8:
* dellemc.powerflex (version 1.6.0)
* dellemc.unity (version 1.6.0)
* grafana.grafana (version 2.0.0)
* microsoft.ad (version 1.0.0)
* servicenow.servicenow (version 1.0.6)

Collections removed from Ansible 8:
* dellemc.os10 (previously included version: 1.1.1)
* dellemc.os6 (previously included version: 1.0.7)
* dellemc.os9 (previously included version: 1.0.4)
* mellanox.onyx (previously included version: 1.0.0)

The full changelog can be found here:

https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/blob/main/8/CHANGELOG-v8.rst


What's the schedule for new Ansible releases after 8.0.0rc1?
---------------------------------------------------------

View the Roadmap for Ansible project 8.0 here:

https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/devel/roadmap/COLLECTIONS_8.html

Subscribe to the Bullhorn for all future release dates, announcements,
and Ansible community contributor news at:

https://bit.ly/subscribe-bullhorn

You can find all past Bullhorn issues on the official wiki page:
https://github.com/ansible/community/wiki/News#the-bullhorn

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