=========== Ansible 2.5

Core Engine Freeze and Module Freeze: 22 January 2018

Core and Curated Module Freeze: 22 January 2018

Community Module Freeze: 7 February 2018

Release Candidate 1 will be 21 February, 2018

Target: March 2018

Service Release schedule: every 2-3 weeks

.. contents:: Topics

Release Manager

Matt Davis (IRC/GitHub: @nitzmahone)

Engine improvements

• Assemble module improvements
  • assemble just skips when in check mode, it should be able to test if there is a difference and changed=true/false.
  • The same with diff, it should work as template modules does
• Handle Password reset prompts cleaner
• Tasks stats for rescues and ignores
• Normalize temp dir usage across all subsystems
• Add option to set playbook dir for adhoc, inventory and console to allow for 'relative path loading'

Ansible-Config

• Extend config to more plugin types and update plugins to support the new config

Inventory

• ansible-inventory option to output group variable assignment and data (--export)
• Create inventory plugins for:
  • aws

Facts

• Namespacing fact variables (with a config option) implemented in ansible/ansible PR #18445 <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/18445>. Proposal found in ansible/proposals issue #17 <https://github.com/ansible/proposals/issues/17>.
• Make fact collectors and gather_subset specs finer grained
• Eliminate unneeded deps between fact collectors
• Allow fact collectors to indicate if they need information from another fact collector to be gathered first.

Static Loop Keyword

• A simpler alternative to with_, loop: only takes a list
• Remove complexity from loops, lookups are still available to users
• Less confusing having a static directive vs a one that is dynamic depending on plugins loaded.

Vault

• Vault secrets client inc new 'keyring' client

Runtime Check on Modules for Disabling

• Filter on things like "supported_by" in module metadata
• Provide users with an option of "warning, error or allow/ignore"
• Configurable with ansible.cfg and environment variable

Windows

• Implement gather_subset on Windows facts

• Fix Windows async + become to allow them to work together

• Implement Windows become flags for controlling various modes (done)

  • logontype
  • elevation behavior

• Convert win_updates to action plugin for auto reboot and extra features (done)

• Spike out changing the connection over to PSRP instead of WSMV (done- it is possible)

• Module updates

  • win_updates (done)

    • Fix win_updates to detect (or request) become
    • Add enable/disable features to win_updates

  • win_dsc further improvements (done)

General Cloud

• Make multi-cloud provisioning easier
• Diff mode will output provisioning task results of ansible-playbook runs
• Terraform module

AWS

• Focus on pull requests for various modules

• Triage existing merges for modules

• Module work

  • ec2_instance
  • ec2_vpc: Allow the addition of secondary IPv4 CIDRS to existing VPCs.
  • AWS Network Load Balancer support (NLB module, ASG support, and so on)
  • rds_instance

Azure

• Azure CLI auth (done)
• Fix Azure module results to have "high-level" output instead of raw REST API dictionary (partial, more to come in 2.6)
• Deprecate Azure automatic storage accounts in azure_rm_virtualmachine (breaks on Azure Stack, punted until AS supports managed disks)

Network Roadmap

• Refactor common network shared code into package (done)
• Convert various nxos modules to use declarative intent (done)
• Refactor various modules to use the cliconf plugin (done)
• Add various missing declarative modules for supported platforms and functions (done)
• Implement a feature that handles platform differences and feature unavailability (done)
• netconf-config.py should provide control for deployment strategy
• Create netconf connection plugin (done)
• Create netconf fact module
• Turn network_cli into a usable connection type (done)
• Implements jsonrpc message passing for ansible-connection (done)
• Improve logging for ansible-connection (done)
• Improve stdout output for failures whilst using persistent connection (done)
• Create IOS-XR NetConf Plugin and refactor iosxr modules to use netconf plugin (done)
• Refactor junos modules to use netconf plugin (done)
• Filters: Add a filter to convert XML response from a network device to JSON object (done)

Documentation

• Extend documentation to more plugins

• Document vault-password-client scripts.

• Network Documentation

  • New landing page (to replace intro_networking) (done)
  • Platform specific guides (done)
  • Walk through: Getting Started (done)
  • Networking and become (done)
  • Best practice (done)

Contributor Quality of Life

• Finish PSScriptAnalyer integration with ansible-test (for enforcing Powershell style) (done)
• Resolve issues requiring skipping of some integration tests on Python 3.