Ansible Collections - How to Write, Test, Publish and Maintain

By John McDonough

Elevator Pitch

Ansible Collections are the new way to add functionality to Ansible. You have all the power now, so let me show you how to harness that power. I’ll show you how to write, test, publish and maintain an Ansible Collection.

Description

Ansible Collections are the new way to add functionality to Ansible. You have all the power now, so let me show you how to harness that power. I’ll show you how to write, test, publish and maintain an Ansible Collection.

As Ansible has grown it has become more difficult to add modules to core Ansible. The time to get your Pull Request merged continues to get longer. When module issues have been resolved the wait for a new Ansible release can be months requiring modules users to employ a workaround until the next Ansible release.

Ansible Collections fix these issues and put you closer to your module users. Publishing an Ansible Collection gives you complete control of your modules and the freedom to publish them and interact with the users of your module in the time and method that works best for you.

However, with this complete control comes the responsibility of correctly writing, testing, publishing and maintaining your modules. Prior to Ansible Collections when a Pull Request was submitted, the Ansible CI/CD process guided your contribution through checks and tests. Once those checks and tests passed there was still a dependency upon a person, or two, or three to move your contributions forward. With Ansible Collections you are responsible for the checks and tests and issue management.

This session will show you how to write, test, publish and manage your Ansible Collection.

Notes

This talk can be used in conjunction with the talk titled “Extending Ansible the write way! How to write an Ansible Module.”