Ansible Galaxy Collections are here!

Ansible Galaxy Collections are here!

As the documentation describes:

Collections are a new way to package and distribute Ansible related content.

I write a lot of roles, roles are nice, but it’s a bit like ingredients without a recipe: A role is only a part of the whole picture.

Collections allow you to package:

• roles
• actions
• filters
• lookup plugins
• modules
• strategies

So instead of [upstreaming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upstream_(software_development) content to Ansible, you can publish or consume content yourself.

The whole process is documented and should not be difficult.

I’ve published my development_environment and only had to change these things:

1. Add galaxy.yml

namespace: "buluma"
name: "development_environment"
description: Install everything you need to develop Ansible roles.
version: "1.0.4"
readme: "README.md"
authors:
    - "Michael Buluma"
dependencies:
license:
    - "Apache-2.0"
tags:
    - development
    - molecule
    - ara
repository: "https://github.com/buluma/ansible-development-environment"
documentation: "https://github.com/buluma/ansible-development-environment/blob/master/README.md"
homepage: "https://buluma.nl"
issues: "https://github.com/buluma/ansible-development-environment/issues"

2. Enable Travis for the repository

Go to Travis and click Sync account. Wait a minute or so and enable the repository containing your collection.

3. Save a hidden variable in Travis

Under settings for a repository you can find Environment Variables. Add one, I called it galaxy_api_key. You’ll refer to this variable in .travis.yml later.

4. Add .travis.yml

---
language: python

install:
  - pip install mazer
  - release=$(mazer build | tail -n1 | awk '{print $NF}')

script:
  - mazer publish --api-key=${galaxy_api_key} ${release}

Bonus hint: Normally you don’t save roles, so you add something like roles/* to .gitignore, but in this case it is a part of the collection. So if you have requirements.yml, download all the roles locally using ansible-galaxy install -r roles/requirements.yml -f and include them in the commit.