What is ansible-core? What is the ansible community package?
What happened to the Ansible project after version 2.9?
Today we're going to talk about ansible community and ansible-core packages released since 2021.
I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot.
ansible vs ansible-core
ansible community
- Uses new versioning (2.10, then 3.0.0)
- Follows semantic versioning rules
- Does not use semantic versioning
- Maintains only one version at a time
- Includes language, runtime, and selected Collections
- Developed and maintained in Collection repositories
ansible-core (was ansible-base 2.10)
- Continues "classic Ansible" versioning (2.11, then 2.12)
- Does not use semantic versioning
- Maintains the latest version plus two older versions
- Includes language, runtime, and builtin plugins
- Developed and maintained in ansible/ansible repository
What happened to ansible after version 2.9?
Starting with version 2.10, Ansible distributes two deliverables: a community package called ansible and a minimalist language and runtime called ansible-core (called ansible-base in version 2.10). Choose the Ansible style and version that matches your particular needs.
The ansible package includes the Ansible language and runtime plus a range of community curated Collections. It recreates and expands on the functionality that was included in Ansible 2.9.
You can choose any of the following ways to install the Ansible community package:
- Install the latest release with your OS package manager (for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Fedora, Debian, or Ubuntu).
- Install with pip (the Python package manager).
Ansible community package release cycle
The Ansible community team typically releases two major versions of the community package per year, on a flexible release cycle that trails the release of ansible-core. This cycle can be extended to allow for larger changes to be properly implemented and tested before a new release is made available. See Ansible Roadmap for upcoming release details. Between major versions, the Ansible team releases a new minor version of the Ansible community package every three weeks. Minor releases include new backward-compatible features, modules, and plugins, as well as bug fixes.
Starting with version 2.10, the Ansible community team guarantees maintenance for only one major community package release at a time. For example, when Ansible 5.0.0 gets released, the team will stop making new 4.x releases. C