What I wish ansible collections would be

What I wish ansible collections would be

Ansible Collections is a way of:

1. Packaging Ansible Content (modules/roles/playbooks).
2. Distributing Ansible Content through Ansible Galaxy.
3. Reducing the size of Ansible Engine.

All modules that are now in Ansible will move to Ansible Collections.

I’m not 100% sure how Ansible Collections will work in the future, but here is a guess.

From an Ansible role

I could imagine that requirements.yml will link depending modules and collections. Something like this:

---
- src: buluma.x
  type: role
- src: buluma.y
  type: collection

That structure would ensure that all modules required to run the role are going to be installed.

From an Ansible playbook repository

Identical to the role setup, I could imagine a requirements.yml that basically prepares the environment with all required dependencies, either roles or collections.

Loop dependencies

Ansible Collections can depend on other Ansible Collections.

Imagine my_collection’s requirements.yml:

---
- src: buluma.y
  type: collection

The Ansible Collection y could refer to my_colletion.

my_collection ---> y
       ^           |
       |           |
       +-----------+

I’m not sure how that can be resolved or prevented.