ansible-build-data

Holds generated but persistent results from building the ansible community package. This information may be referred to by other projects and scripts.

Milestones

Release engineers check the milestones for corresponding releases some time before releasing the package sufficient to solve all related issues.

Blockers

In the context of the Ansible Community package release workflow, a release blocker is a situation which does not allow the package to be released. It might come with a new ansible-core release and affect many of the included collections or in any other way might severely affect consistent work with the ansible package. Severity of the impact is determined by the Steering Committee in each particular case. The release blocker must be resolved before the release can proceed.

In case of a potential release blocker, the following actions need to be done:

Create a community topic describing the potential blocker.
If the Steering Committee considers the circumstances a release blocker, create an issue in this repository.
Put the blocker label on the issue.
Add the issue to a milestone for the affected release.

Structure of data

ansible-build-data
└── 3
    ├── ansible-3.0.0.deps
    ├── ansible-3.1.0.deps
    ├── ansible-3.build
    └── ansible.in

Each major release of Ansible gets a subdirectory of the repository named according to the X.Y version number of Ansible. (ex: 3)
Within each version directory, there is an ansible.in file which lists the collections that are in this release of Ansible. The file consists of one namespace.collection per line. This file is constructed by the person building Ansible for that release.
There will also be a file, ansible-X.build. This file contains lines which consist of namespace.collection followed by a version range like::
```
awx.awx: >=11.0.0,<12.0.0
```
The version range specifies potential versions of the collection that are backwards compatible with what was available when the initial Ansible-X.Y.0 release was frozen. Only versions of the collections within those ranges will be considered for Ansible minor releases. This file will be created by the antsibull-build new-ansible command.
Lastly, there will be multiple, ansible-X.Y.Z.deps files. Those files contain lines which consist of namespace.collection followed by a single version like::
```
awx.awx: 11.2.5
```
The version specifies the exact version of the collection that appeared in that release of Ansible. This file will be created by the antsibull-build single command.

Adding a new collection

Next Ansible major release

To add a collection to the next Ansible major release that has not reached feature freeze:

Add the collection to the ansible.in file in a sub-directory named with a corresponding number.
In the same sub-directory, add the collection to the collection-meta.yaml file, as shown below.
- maintainers (list): The Github usernames of the collection's maintainers.
- repository (string): The URL of the collection's git repository.
- collection-directory (string): The collection's top level directory relative to the Git repository root. The top level directory is where galaxy.yml is located. For most collections, this should be set to .. However, some collections, such as awx.awx, store the collection in a subdirectory. In that case, collection-directory should be set to ./SUBDIRECTORY (SUBDIRECTORY is a placeholder for the actual directory).
- changelog-url (string): If the collection does not provide a changelog in changelogs/changelog.yaml, the URL to the actual changelog needs to be added. Otherwise, this field should be omitted.

collections:
  # NAMESPACE.NAME
  community.example:
    # The Github usernames of this collection's maintainers
    maintainers:
      - person1
      - person2
    # The URL to the collection's SCM repository.
    repository: https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.example
    # This is the directory where galaxy.yml is stored relative to the
    # repository root.
    #
    # For collections stored in the repository root:
    collection-directory: "."
    # For collections stored in a subdirectory:
    collection-directory: "./SUBDIRECTORY"
    # This is an optional field that should only be populated if the collection
    # doesn't include a changelogs/changelog.yaml file.
    # changelog-url: ...

The current Ansible major release

To add a collection to the next minor release of the current Ansible major version:

Add the collection to the ansible.in file in a sub-directory named with a corresponding number.
In the same sub-directory, add the collection and its version range to the ansible-X.build file.
In the same sub-directory, add the collection to the collection-meta.yaml file.
- The maintainer's GitHub user names need to be listed there.
- If the collection does not provide a changelog in changelogs/changelog.yaml, the URL to the actual changelog needs to be added.

Renaming a collection

In some situations, a collection included in Ansible is renamed with its content basically unchanged (up to renaming, adjusting documentation, and potentially other very small changes). In that case, the new collection can be included and the old collection removed if the following procedure is followed.

For simplicity, assume that the next minor Ansible release is X.Y.0, and that collection foo.bar with latest release a.b.c has been renamed to baz.bam with latest release A.B.C.

baz.bam A.B.C must be compatible to foo.bar a.b.c up to renaming plugins. No options must be renamed without backwards compatible aliases, and no defaults or semantics changed.
baz.bam A.B.C can be added to Ansible X.Y.0.
A deprecation warning is added to Ansible X.Y.0's changelog (deprecated_features) that foo.bar has been renamed to baz.bam, that Ansible (X+1).0.0 will start having deprecated redirects from foo.bar to baz.bam, and that foo.bar will be removed from a later major release of Ansible.
A new release foo.bar (a+1).0.0 is made which contains no more content, but only deprecated redirects to baz.bam. Ideally it will have a dependency on baz.bam so that users that install foo.bar will have working deprecated redirects.
Ansible (X+1).0.0 contains both foo.bar (a+1).0.0, and either a baz.bam A.B'.C' release or a later major release that is still compatible with foo.bar a.b.c as specified in 1.
foo.bar will be dropped from Ansible (X+2).0.0 (needs to be announced in its changelog as removed_features).

rndmh3ro/ansible-build-data