ansible/CHANGELOG.md

Ansible Changes By Release

0.6 "Cabo" ------------ pending

• inventory file can use a line of the form base[beg:end]tail to define a set of hosts, where [beg:end] defines a numerical range. 'beg' can be a a string padded with zero(s) to the left. If so provided, it acts as a formatting hint during hostname expansion. The hint must be confirmed by having an 'end' that has the same length as 'beg'
• groups variable available as a hash to return the hosts in each group name
• fetch module now does not fail a system when requesting file paths (ex: logs) that don't exist
• apt module now takes an optional install-recommends=yes|no (default yes)
• fixes to the return codes of the copy module
• copy module takes a remote md5sum to avoid large file transfer
• when sudoing to root, still use /etc/ansible/setup as the metadata path, as if root
• support to tag tasks and includes and use --tags in playbook CLI
• various user and group module fixes (error handling, etc)
• apt module now takes an optional force parameter
• slightly better psychic service status handling for the service module
• cowsay support on Ubuntu
• playbooks can now include other playbooks (example/playbooks/nested_playbooks.yml)
• paramiko is now only imported if needed when running from source checkout
• fetch module fixes for SSH connection type
• modules now consistently all take yes/no for boolean parameters (some accepted true/false)
• in YAML inventory, hosts can list their groups in inverted order now also (see tests/yaml_hosts)
• setup module no longer saves to disk, template module now only used in playbooks
• setup module no longer needs to run twice per playbook
• vars_files now usable with with_items, provided file paths don't contain host specific facts
• error reporting if with_items value is unbound
• with_items no longer creates lots of tasks, creates one task that makes multiple calls
• can use host_specific facts inside with_items (see above)
• at the top level of a playbook, set 'gather_facts: False' to skip fact gathering
• first_available_file and with_items used together will now raise an error
• ec2 inventory script
• mount module
• apt module now passes DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive
• to catch typos, like 'var' for 'vars', playbooks and tasks now yell on invalid parameters
• automatically load (directory_of_inventory_file)/group_vars/groupname and /host_vars/hostname in vars_files
• setup module fixes if no ipv6 support
• internals: template in common module boilerplate, also causes less SSH operations when used
• git module fixes
• various ssh connection fixes for old Ubuntu clients
• setup module overhaul, more modular
• minor caching logic added to inventory to reduce hammering of inventory scripts.
• ./hacking/test-module now supports options like ansible takes and has a debugger mode
• playbook is now colorized, set ANSIBLE_NOCOLOR=1 if you do not like this, does not colorize if not a TTY
• support ranges of hosts in the host file

0.5 "Amsterdam" ------- July 04, 2012

• Service module gets more accurate service states when running with upstart
• Jinja2 usage in playbooks (not templates), reinstated, supports %include directive
• support for --connection ssh (supports Kerberos, bastion hosts, etc), requires ControlMaster
• misc tracebacks replaced with error messages
• various API/internals refactoring
• vars can be built from other variables
• support for exclusion of hosts/groups with "!groupname"
• various changes to support md5 tool differences for FreeBSD nodes & OS X clients
• "unparseable" command output shows in command output for easier debugging
• mktemp is no longer required on remotes (not available on BSD)
• support for older versions of python-apt in the apt module
• a new "assemble" module, for constructing files from pieces of files (inspired by Puppet "fragments" idiom)
• ability to override most default values with ANSIBLE_FOO environment variables
• --module-path parameter can support multiple directories seperated with the OS path seperator
• with_items can take a variable of type list
• ansible_python_interpreter variable available for systems with more than one Python
• BIOS and VMware "fact" upgrades
• cowsay is used by ansible-playbook if installed to improve output legibility (try installing it)
• authorized_key module
• SELinux facts now sourced from the python selinux library
• removed module debug option -D
• added --verbose, which shows output from successful playbook operations
• print the output of the raw command inside /usr/bin/ansible as with command/shell
• basic setup module support for Solaris
• ./library relative to the playbook is always in path so modules can be included in tarballs with playbooks

0.4 "Unchained" ------- May 23, 2012

Internals/Core

• internal inventory API now more object oriented, parsers decoupled
• async handling improvements
• misc fixes for running ansible on OS X (overlord only)
• sudo improvements, now works much more smoothly
• sudo to a particular user with -U/--sudo-user, or using 'sudo_user: foo' in a playbook
• --private-key CLI option to work with pem files

Inventory

• can use -i host1,host2,host3:port to specify hosts not in inventory (replaces --override-hosts)
• ansible INI style format can do groups of groups [groupname:children] and group vars [groupname:vars]
• groups and users module takes an optional system=yes|no on creation (default no)
• list of hosts in playbooks can be expressed as a YAML list in addition to ; delimited

Playbooks

• variables can be replaced like ${foo.nested_hash_key.nested_subkey[array_index]}
• unicode now ok in templates (assumes utf8)
• able to pass host specifier or group name in to "hosts:" with --extra-vars
• ansible-pull script and example playbook (extreme scaling, remediation)
• inventory_hostname variable available that contains the value of the host as ansible knows it
• variables in the 'all' section can be used to define other variables based on those values
• 'group_names' is now a variable made available to templates
• first_available_file feature, see selective_file_sources.yml in examples/playbooks for info
• --extra-vars="a=2 b=3" etc, now available to inject parameters into playbooks from CLI

Incompatible Changes

• jinja2 is only usable in templates, not playbooks, use $foo instead
• --override-hosts removed, can use -i with comma notation (-i "ahost,bhost")
• modules can no longer include stderr output (paramiko limitation from sudo)

Module Changes

• tweaks to SELinux implementation for file module
• fixes for yum module corner cases on EL5
• file module now correctly returns the mode in octal
• fix for symlink handling in the file module
• service takes an enable=yes|no which works with chkconfig or updates-rc.d as appropriate
• service module works better on Ubuntu
• git module now does resets and such to work more smoothly on updates
• modules all now log to syslog
• enabled=yes|no on a service can be used to toggle chkconfig & updates-rc.d states
• git module supports branch=
• service fixes to better detect status using return codes of the service script
• custom facts provided by the setup module mean no dependency on Ruby, facter, or ohai
• service now has a state=reloaded
• raw module for bootstrapping and talking to routers w/o Python, etc

Misc Bugfixes

• fixes for variable parsing in only_if lines
• misc fixes to key=value parsing
• variables with mixed case now legal
• fix to internals of hacking/test-module development script

0.3 "Baluchitherium" -- April 23, 2012

• Packaging for Debian, Gentoo, and Arch
• Improvements to the apt and yum modules
• A virt module
• SELinux support for the file module
• Ability to use facts from other systems in templates (aka exported resources like support)
• Built in Ansible facts so you don't need ohai, facter, or Ruby
• tempdir selections that work with noexec mounted /tmp
• templates happen locally, not remotely, so no dependency on python-jinja2 for remote computers
• advanced inventory format in YAML allows more control over variables per host and per group
• variables in playbooks can be structured/nested versus just a flat namespace
• manpage upgrades (docs)
• various bugfixes
• can specify a default --user for playbooks rather than specifying it in the playbook file
• able to specify ansible port in ansible host file (see docs)
• refactored Inventory API to make it easier to write scripts using Ansible
• looping capability for playbooks (with_items)
• support for using sudo with a password
• module arguments can be unicode
• A local connection type, --connection=local, for use with cron or in kickstarts
• better module debugging with -D
• fetch module for pulling in files from remote hosts
• command task supports creates=foo for idempotent semantics, won't run if file foo already exists

0.0.2 and 0.0.1

• Initial stages of project