Ansible Development Tools (ADT)

[KavanaK]

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