ansiblerepo ==========-

Wrapper for SRPM building tools for ansibl9 8.x and ansible-core 2.16 using python3.11. CentOS 7 does not have python3.11 easily available, so it's no longer supported here for Ansible servers.

Stop installing ansible package

The "ansible" package itself is now pointless. It contains more than 100 distinct ansible_collections entries, takes up at least 300 Meg gig of disk to provide only a few modules that an ansible server might actually use. Those modules are better provided by installing ansible-core and using the "ansible-galaxy" tool to install them as needed.

Modules in ansible

The actual list of ansible collection modules in the ansible tarball is in the release specific file of the ansible-build-date git repo, for example:

• https://github.com/ansible-community/ansible-build-data/blob/main/8/ansible-8.0.0.deps

Python 3.11 or later required

ansible-core 2.14.x and the matching ansible-7.x now require python 3.8 or better, and are not supportable RHEL 7. So the older ansible-core 2.11.x and ansible-4.x have been abandoned.

ansible-core 2.15 requires importlib-resources, which is built into python 3.11

RHEL dnf modularity breakage

The dnf modularity of RHEL 8 has repeatedly broken installation of both build components and of dependencies to build ansible-core. The updates to python3.11 have helped.

Building ansible

Ideally, install "mock" and use that to build for both RHEL and up, through 9 and Fedora 38. Run these commands at the top directory.

• make getsrc # Get source tarvalls for all SRPMs

• make cfgs # Create local .cfg configs for "mock".

• • centos-stream+epel-8-x86_64.cfg # Used for some Makefiles
• • centos-stream+epel-9-x86_64.cfg # Used for some Makefiles
• • fedora-38-x86_64.cfg # Used for some Makefiles
• • ansiblerepo-8-x86_64.cfg
• • ansiblerepo-9-x86_64.cfg
• • ansiblerepo-f38-x86_64.cfg

• make repos # Creates local local yum repositories in $PWD/ansiblerepo

• • ansiblerepo/el/8
• • ansiblerepo/el/9
• • ansiblerepo/fedora/38

• make # Make all distinct versions using "mock"

Building a compoenent, without "mock" and in the local working system, can also be done for testing.

• make build

ansible has strong dependencies on other python modules that may, or may not, be available in a particular OS. These are listed in the Makefile

Installing Ansible

The relevant yum repository is built locally in ansiblereepo. To enable the repository, use this:

• make repo

Then install the .repo file in /etc/yum.repos.d/ as directed. This requires root privileges, which is why it's not automated.

Ansible RPM Build Security

There is a significant security risk with enabling yum repositories for locally built components. Generating GPG signed packages and ensuring that the compneents are in this build location are securely and safely built is not addressed in this test setup.

ansible_collections Rather Than ansible Package

There are tools here to build an "ansible_collections" package rather than ansible, more consistently named and deployed than the ansible package itself but with precisely the same ansible collections modules.

	Nico Kadel-Garcia <nkadel@gmail.com>