Links on this page may not point to the most recent versions of plugins. In preparation for the release of 2.10, many plugins and modules have migrated to Collections on `Ansible Galaxy <https://galaxy.ansible.com>`_. For the current development status of Collections and FAQ see `Ansible Collections Community Guide <https://github.com/ansible-collections/overview/blob/main/README.rst>`_.
Netconf plugins are abstractions over the Netconf interface to network devices. They provide a standard interface for Ansible to execute tasks on those network devices.
These plugins generally correspond one-to-one to network device platforms. The appropriate netconf plugin will
thus be automatically loaded based on the ``ansible_network_os`` variable. If the platform supports standard
Netconf implementation as defined in the Netconf RFC specification the ``default`` netconf plugin will be used.
In case if the platform supports propriety Netconf RPC's in that case the interface can be defined in platform
specific netconf plugin.
.._enabling_netconf:
Adding netconf plugins
-------------------------
You can extend Ansible to support other network devices by dropping a custom plugin into the ``netconf_plugins`` directory.
.._using_netconf:
Using netconf plugins
------------------------
The netconf plugin to use is determined automatically from the ``ansible_network_os`` variable. There should be no reason to override this functionality.
Most netconf plugins can operate without configuration. A few have additional options that can be set to impact how
tasks are translated into netconf commands. A ncclient device specific handler name can be set in the netconf plugin
or else the value of ``default`` is used as per ncclient device handler.
Plugins are self-documenting. Each plugin should document its configuration options.
