New Ansible Releases

Preamble

Releasing new Ansible major versions and frozen releases requires some special handling. For information about the general release process, see Ansible Release Process.

Setting up for a new major release

After the release of X.0.0, it is necessary to create the directory structure for Ansible X+1.

1. Determine the current major version and next major version:

   CURRENT_MAJOR_VERSION=11
   NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION=12
   

2. Create the major version directory:

   mkdir "${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}/"
   

3. Copy over the ansible.in and collection-meta.yaml files:

   cp "${CURRENT_MAJOR_VERSION}/ansible.in" "${CURRENT_MAJOR_VERSION}/collection-meta.yaml" \
      "${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}/"
   

4. Symlink ${CURRENT_MAJOR_VERSION}.0.0's deps file to ${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}/ancestor.deps:

   ln -sr "${CURRENT_MAJOR_VERSION}/ansible-${CURRENT_MAJOR_VERSION}.0.0.deps" \
      "${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}/ancestor.deps"
   

5. Create a stub changelog.yaml file:

   cat <<EOF >${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}/changelog.yaml
   ---
   ancestor: ${CURRENT_MAJOR_VERSION}.0.0
   releases: {}
   EOF
   

6. Create a blank validate-tags-ignores file:

   touch "${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}/validate-tags-ignores"
   

7. Create a blank ansible-${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}.constraints file:

   touch "${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}/ansible-${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}.constraints"
   

   You might need to fill this with some initial data.

8. Add the next major version to ansible-build-data's CI:

   Open .github/workflows/antsibull-build.yml and add the following block to the matrix:

   - name: Ansible ${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}
     ansible_version: ${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}.99.0
     ansible_major_version: ${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}
   

9. Update collection-meta.yaml and ansible.in:

   1. Find all collection entries from collections in collections-meta.yaml that have a removal entry with major_version equal to ${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}.

      • If the removal entry has an updates and the last entry is about keeping them (readded_version or cancelled_version), remove the removal entry completely.

      • Otherwise, cut out the collection's entry and paste it into a temporary buffer / file.

   2. For every cut out metadata entry, remove the corresponding entry in ansible.in.

   3. For every cut out metadata entry, find the correct place in removed_collections in collections-meta.yaml to insert the removed part from collections-meta.yaml and paste the entry there. Modify the entry as follows:

      • Replace major_version: ${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION} by version: ${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}.0.0a1.

      • Remove announce_version if present.

      • Remove updates if present.

10. Validate build data:

    antsibull-build lint-build-data --data-dir "${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}" "${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}"
    

11. Commit the changes:

    git add "${NEXT_MAJOR_VERSION}" .github/workflows/antsibull-build.yml
    

12. Submit a PR against the ansible-build-data repository.