* Created new connection plugins ``network_cli`` and ``netconf`` to replace ``connection=local``. ``connection=local`` will continue to work for a number of Ansible releases.
* No more ``unable to open shell``. A clear and descriptive message will be displayed in normal ansible-playbook output without needing to enable debug mode
* Loads of documentation, see `Ansible for Network Automation Documentation <http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.5/network/>`_.
* Refactor common network shared code into package under ``module_utils/network/``
* Filters: Add a filter to convert XML response from a network device to JSON object.
* Loads of bug fixes.
* Plus lots more.
Bugfixes
--------
- tower_* modules - fix credentials to work with v1 and v2 of Ansible Tower API
- docker_container, docker_image, docker_network modules - Update to work with Docker SDK 3.1
- edgeos_facts - fix error when there are no commit revisions (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/37123)
- setup.py - Ensure we install ansible-config and ansible-inventory with `pip install -e` (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/37151)
- Fix bytes/text handling in maven_artifact that was causing tracebacks on Python3
- znode - fixed a bug calling the zookeeper API under Python3 https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/36999
- Fix for unarchive when users use the --strip-components extra_opt to tar causing ansible to set permissions on the wrong directory. https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/37048