Ansible Core Modules

[Trevor]

Prior to Ansible Core (ansible-core package), Ansible Engine (ansible package)
had over 3.3K modules.  Ansible Core, the successor to Ansible Engine, is equipped
with less than 150 modules (at least what I'm seeing on my RHEL 9.2 system).

Question: Where did all of those 3K+ modules go to, that were a part of Ansible Engine?
                  I have to believe they're around somewhere!

[Fran_Garcia]

Hey Trevor,

* The supported/curated list of collections is available in the Red Hat Automation Hub : https://console.redhat.com/ansible/automation-hub . It is also shipped as a part of Ansible Automation Platform in the execution environments as well.

* The community (unsupported) version of the modules is available, as always, from https://galaxy.ansible.com/ . 

As you said, a while ago the Ansible upstream project decided to split the distribution of Ansible from the core part of the product (ansible itself) from the modules, as having a single Git repository with hundreds/thousands of opened bugs for each component was becoming next to impossible to manage. With this way of distributing, it's clearer which components are provided by whom, and more easily managed in independent Git repositories.

Also, RHEL includes the RHEL System Roles ... supported Ansible content that helps configuring the system. It is supported to use those with standalone RHEL (No AAP subscription required). 

Cheers

Fran

[Trevor]

Fran,

Many thanks for your reply.  You removed some of the fog
that was building up in my brain.

The more I dig into Ansible Automation Platform, the more
I'm understanding why the term "Platform" was included in
the name.

Thanks again Fran!

[Travis]

@Trevor - In Ansible Automation Engine (Ansible <= 2.9) the ansible-core package had all modules built-in. This had good features, but also had other issues with respect to when modules needed to be replaced. Post (ansible 2.9) we have collections. The decision was made to have a core set of modules available in the ansible.builtin collection which comes supplied with Ansible Core and now everything else is in their own collections. As answers have been provided above, the main location to get these from is Ansible Galaxy or from the supported Red Hat Ansible Automation Hub.

One of the other features with AAP2.x and automation platform as you know from other posts is that we have EEIs and EEs (Execution Environment Images) and (Execution Environments). These have collections built-in and available for use which often contain the modules you are looking for, such as firewalld which is in the ansible.posix collection. The good thing is to help mitigate some of these changes, Red Hat supports and maintains a RHEL8-Supported EEI which has many other supported collections pre-installed.

The real question you are probably wondering and what started this ... in the 1000's of modules that I used to use in my playbooks - if it isn't in ansible.builtin where did it go?

Collection Mapping

https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/config/ansible_builtin_runtime.yml

The link above had a pretty good mapping of modules to collections and has been maintained.

Also, here are a few other references that I provide to students when delivering the RH294 and DO374 courses ...

Ansible Community Collections: https://galaxy.ansible.com/community

Ansible Galaxy - Collections and Roles: https://docs.rockylinux.org/books/learning_ansible/04-ansible-galaxy/

Ansible Posix Collection: https://galaxy.ansible.com/ansible/posix

• https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2023/03/07/install-ansible-23-on-rhel-91?sc_cid=7013a0000034r...
• https://www.ansible.com/blog/introducing-ansible-automation-platform-2
• https://www.ansible.com/blog/whats-new-in-ansible-automation-platform-2-private-automation-hub
• https://www.ansible.com/blog/introducing-red-hat-ansible-automation-platform-2.1

Hope this helps