Ansible Development Tools (ADT)

KavanaK — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 05:07:05 GMT

INTRODUCTION:

Ansible Development Tools or ADT for short, aims to streamline the setup and usage of several tools needed to create ansible content. When it comes to creating automation content using Ansible, there are several packages available that can help users in different parts of the content-creating journey. From bootstrapping new projects, all the way to ensuring content follows best practices and verifying it behaves as intended via well-established test frameworks.

KEY FEATURES:

Simplify creation, testing, and maintennace of roles/playbooks
Eliminate manual setup of dev environments
Promote consistent standards in Ansible development

IDEAL FOR:

Individual developers
Teams working in CI/CD
Projects adopting Execution Environments (EE)

INSTALLATION:

Run the fallowing command to install all the packages of ansible dev tool
- pip install ansible-dev-tools

INCLUDED PACKAGES:

ansible-core:

Run Ansible playbooks and modules
The execution engine for all Ansible automation.

ansible-lint:

Validate and lint your YAML against Ansible best practices
Ensures roles and playbooks follow syntax and security best practices
Works in pre-commit hooks or CI pipelines

molecule:

Role and collection testing framework
Test roles locally or in containers/cloud (Docker, Podman, EC2, Vagrant)
Write scenarios to test install, converge, verify, and cleanup.

ansible-navigator:

TUI interface to explore automation content in Ees
Supports execution context, stdout logs, and inventory exploration

ansible-builder:

Build OCI-compliant containers for Ansible

ansible-creator:

Boilerplate generator for roles/collections
Instantly generates best-practice skeletons for: Roles Colections and Documents.

ansible-sign:

Sign and verify automation content for trust and traceability.
Cryptographic signing of automation artifacts (aligns with SLSA supply chain security).
Ideal for certified collections.

ansible-dev-environment (ade):

Creates Python virtual environments for isolated collection testing.
Great for multi-version compatibility.

INSTALLATION OF ADT PACKAGES:

COMMANDS FOR THE ABOVE PACKAGES:

ansible-core: ansible-playbook playbook.yml

ansible-lint: ansible-lint site.yml

molecule:
Initialize molecule in a role directory : molecule init scenario --role-name myrole

Create and run tests for your scenario : molecule test

ansible-builder: ansible-builder build -f execution-environment.yml

ansible-navigator: ansible-navigator run site.yml -m stdout --ee true

ansible-creator: ansible-creator init role.myapp

ansible-dev-environment: ansible-dev-environment init
ansible-sign: ansible-sign sign --collection-path path/to/collection

BENEFITS OF USING ADT:

Developer Efficiency:

Bootstrap entire environment in minutes
Enforce code quality through linting
Automate test cycles with Molecule

Ops Integration:

Build reusable Execution Environments with all dependencies
Run production-grade automation in containers

Security:

Sign playbooks and roles before publishing
Verify integrity of automation content before deployment

Works with:

VS Code + Ansible Extension
GitHub Actions / GitLab CI / Jenkins
Docker / Podman / DevContainers

Learn more about Ansible-dev-tools? ansible-dev-tools

topic Ansible Development Tools (ADT) in Software - General

Ansible Development Tools (ADT)