retirement of ansible-2.9.x

[Kevin Fenzi]

Greetings.

Just a reminder that ansible-core (The split out ansible 'engine') will
be landing in RHEL8.6 (and other el builds thereafter). Also, the
ansible 2.9.x ('ansible classic') package is going to going end of life
and no longer supported in that same timeframe.

So, at that time I will be retiring the ansible 2.9.x package in epel7.

In epel8 I will be converting the 'ansible' epel8 package into the
upstream ansible-5 meta collections package (which also pulls in
ansible-core).

epel7 and epel8 ansible users are advised to plan for this
retirement/change.

Thank you,

kevin

[Maxwell G]

On Tuesday, April 19, 2022 3:14:56 PM CDT  wrote:
> In epel8 I will be converting the 'ansible' epel8 package into the
> upstream ansible-5 meta collections package (which also pulls in
> ansible-core).

Hi everyone,

I have rebased ansible to ansible 5 in epel8 and submitted a Bodhi update[1]. 
I would appreciate if you could help test the update and provide feedback. We 
are also providing a newer version of ansible 5 in epel8-next that depends on 
the newer version of ansible-core available in CentOS 8 Stream. Here[2] is the 
Bodhi update for the epel8-next version.

[1]: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2022-67f52f0700
[2]: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-NEXT-2022-7083a5c511

I also branched ansible for epel9 and epel9-next. Here[3,4] are the Bodhi 
updates for that.

[4]:https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2022-73e215eb5c
[5]: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-NEXT-2022-3090b856c2

Remember that ansible 5 is just a bundle of ansible collections that are 
released together, and it depends on ansible-core (the engine) which provides 
the core modules, engine, and command line tools.  This provides the 
"batteries-included" approach that users of ansible classic (ansible 2.9.x and 
below) are used to. If you prefer a more minimalist approach, you can install 
ansible-core alongside the specific collections you need. You can install 
collections through EPEL's ansible-collection-* RPM packages or from Ansible 
Galaxy. If you would like to do this, you can switch to ansible-core with `dnf 
swap ansible ansible-core`.