Downloading collections

To download a collection and its dependencies for an offline install, run ansible-galaxy collection download. This downloads the collections specified and their dependencies to the specified folder and creates a requirements.yml file which can be used to install those collections on a host without access to a Galaxy server. All the collections are downloaded by default to the ./collections folder.

Just like the install command, the collections are sourced based on the configured galaxy server config. Even if a collection to download was specified by a URL or path to a tarball, the collection will be re-downloaded from the configured Galaxy server.

Collections can be specified as one or multiple collections or with a requirements.yml file just like ansible-galaxy collection install.

To download a single collection and its dependencies:

ansible-galaxy collection download my_namespace.my_collection

To download a single collection at a specific version:

ansible-galaxy collection download my_namespace.my_collection:1.0.0

To download multiple collections either specify multiple collections as command line arguments as shown above or use a requirements file in the format documented with Install multiple collections with a requirements file.

ansible-galaxy collection download -r requirements.yml

You can also download a source collection directory. The collection is built with the mandatory galaxy.yml file.

ansible-galaxy collection download /path/to/collection

ansible-galaxy collection download git+file:///path/to/collection/.git

You can download multiple source collections from a single namespace by providing the path to the namespace.

ns/
├── collection1/
│   ├── galaxy.yml
│   └── plugins/
└── collection2/
    ├── galaxy.yml
    └── plugins/

ansible-galaxy collection install /path/to/ns

All the collections are downloaded by default to the ./collections folder but you can use -p or --download-path to specify another path:

ansible-galaxy collection download my_namespace.my_collection -p ~/offline-collections

Once you have downloaded the collections, the folder contains the collections specified, their dependencies, and a requirements.yml file. You can use this folder as is with ansible-galaxy collection install to install the collections on a host without access to a Galaxy server.

# This must be run from the folder that contains the offline collections and requirements.yml file downloaded
# by the internet-connected host
cd ~/offline-collections
ansible-galaxy collection install -r requirements.yml