===========
Ansible 2.7
===========

.. contents:: Topics

Release Schedule
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Expected
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- 2018-09-06 Core Freeze (Engine and Core Modules/Plugins)
- 2018-09-06 Alpha Release 1
- 2018-09-13 Community Freeze (Non-Core Modules/Plugins)
- 2018-09-13 Beta Release 1
- 2018-09-27 Release Candidate 1
- 2018-10-04 General Availability

Cleaning Duty
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- Drop Py2.6 for controllers
- Remove dependency on simplejson


Engine Improvements
-------------------

- Make ``become`` plugin based. `pr#38861 <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/38861>`_ 
- Introduce a ``live`` keyword to provide modules the ability to push intermediate (live) updates `pr#13620 <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/13620>`_
- Create a configuration object for a top level content installation path for modules, plugins, roles, etc. 
- Investigate what it will take to utilise the work performed by Mitogen maintainers.
- Provide sane connection defaults by platform `ansible_platform`.
- Refactor connection/shell/action/terminal/become plugins to allow looser coupling and more mix-and-match behaviour.
- Investigate performance improvements in using threads as opposed to forks.
- Jinja native types will allow for users to render a Python native type. `pr#32738 <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/32738>`_


Core Modules
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- Include feature changes and improvements
  
  - Create new argument `apply` that will allow for included tasks to inherit explicitly provided attributes. `pr#39236 <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/39236>`_
  - Create "private" functionality for allowing vars/default sot be exposed outside of roles. `pr#41330 <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/41330>`_

- Provide a parameter for the `template` module to output to different encoding formats.
- `reboot` module for Linux hosts

Cloud Modules
-------------

General
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* Cloud auth plugin `proposal#24 <https://github.com/ansible/proposals/issues/24>`_

AWS
===
* Inventory plugin for RDS
* Count support for `ec2_instance`
* `aws_eks` module `pr#41183 <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/41183>`_
* Cloudformation stack sets support
* RDS instance and snapshot modules
* Diff mode improvements for cloud modules

Azure
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* Azure inventory plugin
* Azure stack support for modules


Network
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General
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* Refactor the apis in cliconf and netconf plugins so that they have a uniform signature across supported network platforms.

Modules
=======

* New ``net_config`` module
* New ``cli_command`` module
* Refactor ``netconf_config`` module to add additional functionality. `#proposal#104 <https://github.com/ansible/proposals/issues/104>`_

Windows
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General
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* Investigate the cause of WinRM HTTPS read timeouts
* WinRM connection persistence (improves performance)
* Experiment with OpenSSH + powershell

Modules
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* `win_domain` and `win_domain_controller` action wrappers
* Add link to `win_file`
* Hostname change support for `win_domain` and `win_domain_controller`