On September 23, 2024, a vibrant community of automation enthusiasts gathered in London for an insightful Ansible DevTools meetup. The event, aimed at showcasing the latest advancements in Ansible development tools, brought together developers, engineers, and tech enthusiasts eager to explore new features and capabilities.
Key Highlights
The meetup featured a series of presentations by Ansible developers, highlighting new tools and updates planned for Q4 2024. A diverse audience engaged actively with the content, with many capturing the moment through photos and taking notes on their devices.
1. Introduction to Ansible DevTools
The session commenced with an introduction to the Ansible DevTools ansible-dev-tools package. The speaker presented an overview of the package, designed to facilitate automation developers in creating, testing, and deploying Ansible automation quickly and efficiently. The package promises to ensure the installation of compatible tool versions and is available as a Python package and an EE container upstream or RPM package for AAP 2.5 users.
2. Molecule 6 – A Refined Test Runner
The presentation on Ansible Molecule 6 revealed a significant refocus of the project as a functional test runner for Ansible playbooks and roles. With the introduction of the 'delegated' driver as the only supported driver and the removal of the 'testinfra' tester from the distribution, Molecule 6 aims to improve interoperability with collections and support integration tests.
3. Ansible VS Code Extension
The Ansible VS Code extension is set to enhance content creation significantly. The extension offers syntax highlighting, live validation, and AI-powered suggestions from Ansible LightSpeed. The tool supports Ansible content development on both Windows and macOS, featuring auto-completion, hover, and go-to functionalities to simplify the coding process.
4. Ansible Content Actions with GitHub
Ansible-content-actions, currently in an experimental phase, is being developed to leverage GitHub Actions for testing and automation. The tool aims to minimize CI/CD footprints by chaining different tests under a single job execution, automating changelog publishing, and reducing the manual creation of changelog entries. The community is eagerly anticipating its stable release, expected to streamline workflows significantly.
Community Engagement
The meetup was more than just a series of presentations; it was a platform for the Ansible community to engage, share i