Releases and maintenance

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, we release a new minor version of the Ansible community package every four weeks. Minor releases include new backwards-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 4.0.0 gets released, the team will stop making new 3.x releases. Community members may maintain older versions if desired.

Each major release of the Ansible community package accepts the latest released version of each included Collection and the latest released version of ansible-core. For specific schedules and deadlines, see the Ansible Roadmap for each version. Major releases of the Ansible community package can contain breaking changes in the modules and other plugins within the included Collections and in core features.

The Ansible community package follows semantic versioning rules. Minor releases of the Ansible community package accept only backwards-compatible changes in included Collections, that is, not Collections major releases. Collections must also use semantic versioning, so the Collection version numbers reflect this rule. For example, if Ansible 3.0.0 releases with community.general 2.0.0, then all minor releases of Ansible 3.x (such as Ansible 3.1.0 or Ansible 3.5.0) must include a 2.x release of community.general (such as 2.8.0 or 2.9.5) and not 3.x.x or later major releases.

Work in Collections is tracked within the individual Collection repositories.

You can refer to the Ansible package porting guides for tips on updating your playbooks to run on newer versions of Ansible. For Ansible 2.10 and later releases, you can install the Ansible package with pip. See Installing Ansible for details. You can download older Ansible releases from https://releases.ansible.com/ansible/.

Ansible community changelogs

This table links to the changelogs for each major Ansible release. These changelogs contain the dates and significant changes in each minor release.

ansible-core release cycle

ansible-core is developed and released on a flexible release cycle. We can extend this cycle to properly implement and test larger changes before a new release is made available. See ansible-core Roadmaps for upcoming release details.

ansible-core has a graduated maintenance structure that extends to three major releases. For more information, read about the Development and maintenance workflows or see the chart in ansible-core control node Python support for the degrees to which current releases are maintained.

You can refer to the Ansible Core Porting Guides for tips on updating your playbooks to run on newer versions of ansible-core.

You can install ansible-core with pip. See Installing Ansible for details.

ansible-core control node Python support

Starting with ansible-core version 2.12, each release includes control node support for the three most recently released Python versions.

ansible-core target node Python support

Starting with ansible-core version 2.16, each release includes target node support for:

• The 6 most recently released Python versions.

• The 7 most recently released Python versions every 6th ansible-core release (2.16, 2.22, etc.)

Support for Python 2.7 is included in ansible-core version 2.16 and earlier.

ansible-core target node PowerShell and Windows support

ansible-core on Windows supports the baseline version of PowerShell that each Windows version ships with. For example, Windows Server 2016 shipped with PowerShell 5.1 so Ansible will support PowerShell 5.1 for the life of Windows Server 2016 support. Support for each Windows version is determined by the Windows lifecycle policy and when each version reaches the extended end date. For example Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 extended end date was for October 10th 2023 while Windows Server 2016 is January 12th 2027. Windows support does not align with the 3 year Extended Security Updates (ESU) support from Microsoft which is a paid support option for products that are past the normal end of support date from Microsoft.

ansible-core support matrix

This table links to the changelogs for each major ansible-core release. These changelogs contain the dates and significant changes in each minor release. Dates listed indicate the start date of the maintenance cycle.

Feature freezes

During final preparations for a new release, core developers and maintainers focus on improving the release candidate, not on adding or reviewing new features. We may impose a feature freeze.

A feature freeze means that we delay new features and fixes unrelated to the pending release so we can create the new release as soon as possible.

Release candidates

We create at least one release candidate before each new major release of Ansible or ansible-core. Release candidates allow the Ansible community to try out new features, test existing playbooks on the release candidate, and report bugs or issues they find.

Ansible and ansible-core tag the first release candidate (RC1) which is usually scheduled to last five business days. If no major bugs or issues are identified during this period, the release candidate becomes the final release.

If there are major problems with the first candidate, the team and the community fix them and tag a second release candidate (RC2). This second candidate lasts for a shorter duration than the first. If no problems have been reported for an RC2 after two business days, the second release candidate becomes the final release.

If there are major problems in RC2, the cycle begins again with another release candidate and repeats until the maintainers agree that all major problems have been fixed.

Ansible community package workflow

The Ansible community develops and maintains the features and functionality included in the Ansible community package in Collections repositories, with a workflow that looks like this:

• Developers add new features and bug fixes to the individual Collections, following each Collection’s rules on contributing.

• Each new feature and each bug fix includes a changelog fragment describing the work.

• Release engineers create a minor release for the current version every four weeks to ensure that the latest bug fixes are available to users.

• At the end of the development period, the release engineers announce which Collections, and which major version of each included Collection, will be included in the next release of the Ansible community package. New Collections and new major versions may not be added after this, and the work of creating a new release begins.

We generally do not provide fixes for unmaintained releases of the Ansible community package, however, there can sometimes be exceptions for critical issues.

Some Collections are maintained by the Ansible team, some by Partner organizations, and some by community teams. For more information on adding features or fixing bugs in Ansible-maintained Collections, see Contributing to Ansible-maintained Collections.

ansible-core workflow

The Ansible community develops and maintains ansible-core on GitHub, with a workflow that looks like this:

• Developers add new features and bug fixes to the devel branch.

• Each new feature and each bug fix includes a changelog fragment describing the work.

• The development team backports bug fixes to one, two, or three stable branches, depending on the severity of the bug. They do not backport new features.

• Release engineers create a minor release for each maintained version every four weeks to ensure that the latest bug fixes are available to users.

• At the end of the development period, the release engineers impose a feature freeze and the work of creating a new release begins.

We generally do not provide fixes for unmaintained releases of ansible-core, however, there can sometimes be exceptions for critical issues.

For more information about adding features or fixing bugs in ansible-core see The Ansible Development Cycle.

Generating changelogs

We generate changelogs based on fragments. When creating new features for existing modules and plugins or fixing bugs, create a changelog fragment describing the change. A changelog entry is not needed for new modules or plugins. Details for those items will be generated from the module documentation.

To add changelog fragments to Collections in the Ansible community package, we recommend the antsibull-changelog utility.

To add changelog fragments for new features and bug fixes in ansible-core, see the changelog examples and instructions in the Community Guide.

Ansible community package deprecation cycle

Since Ansible is a package of individual collections, the deprecation cycle depends on the collection maintainers. We recommend the collection maintainers deprecate a feature in one Ansible major version and do not remove that feature for one year, or at least until the next major Ansible version. For example, deprecate the feature in 3.1.0 and do not remove the feature until 5.0.0 or 4.0.0 at the earliest. Collections should use semantic versioning, such that the major collection version cannot be changed within an Ansible major version. Therefore, the removal should not happen before the next major Ansible community package release. This is up to each collection maintainer and cannot be guaranteed.

ansible-core deprecation cycle

The deprecation cycle in ansible-core is normally across 4 feature releases (2.x. where the x marks a feature release). The feature is normally removed in the 4th release after we announce the deprecation. For example, something deprecated in 2.10 will be removed in 2.13. The tracking is tied to the number of releases, not the release numbering itself. Although this is the standard, there are times where a deprecation cycle for a feature or behavior may have a longer or shorter deprecation cycle based on use or urgency of removal. Unintended or undocumented functionality may be removed without a deprecation cycle. In this context, unintended functionality refers specifically to emergent features that occur outside the release roadmap.