Collection-level dependencies

When Ansible Builder installs collections into an execution environment, it also installs their controller-side Python or system package dependencies listed by each collection on Galaxy.

For Ansible Builder to find and install collection dependencies, those dependencies must be defined in files in a collection repository.

Note

If present, the files below must be included in the packaged collection on Galaxy. Ansible Builder cannot install dependencies listed in files that are included in the build_ignore of a collection, because those files are not included in the collection artifact.

If you are a collection maintainer, make sure the controller-side dependencies are specified and verified.

We recommend you specify paths to dependency files in the meta/execution-environment.yml file. Here is an example of its content:

dependencies:
  python: meta/ee-requirements.txt  # List Python package requirements in the file
  system: meta/ee-bindep.txt  # List system package requirements in the file

If the meta/execution-environment.yml file is not present, by default, Ansible Builder will expect the dependencies to be defined in:

  • the requirements.txt file in the collection root directory for Python package requirements

  • the bindep.txt file in the collection root directory for system package requirements

Note

If your collection uses the requirements.txt or bindep.txt files in its root directory for anything else but its controller-side dependencies, for example, for listing testing requirements, make sure you use the meta/execution-environment.yml file to specify other dependency files for execution environment purposes.

Dependency introspection

If any dependencies are given, the introspection is run by Ansible Builder so that the requirements are found before container image assembly.

A user can see the introspection output during the builder intermediate phase using the build -v3 option.

How to verify collection-level metadata

Note

Running the introspect command described below is not part of a typical workflow for building and using execution environments.

Collection developers can verify that dependencies specified in the collection will be processed correctly by Ansible Builder.

To do that, the collection has to be installed locally.

When installing collections using ansible-galaxy

The easiest way to install a collection is to use the ansible-galaxy command which is a part of the ansible package.

Run the introspect command against your collection path:

ansible-builder introspect COLLECTION_PATH

The default collection path used by the ansible-galaxy command is ~/.ansible/collections/. Read more about collection paths in the Ansible configuration settings guide.

Note

Use the -v3 option to introspect to see logging messages about requirements that are being excluded.

When installing collections manually

If you download collection tarballs from Galaxy manually or clone collection git repositories, for the introspect command to work properly, be sure you store your collections using the following directory structure:

ansible_collections/NAMESPACE/COLLECTION

For example, if you need to inspect the community.docker collection, the path will be:

ansible_collections/community/docker

Then, if the ansible_collection directory is in your home directory, you can run introspect with the following command:

ansible-builder introspect ~/

Python Dependencies

Ansible Builder combines all the Python requirements files from all collections into a single file.

Certain package names are specifically ignored by ansible-builder, meaning that Ansible Builder does not include them in the combined file of Python dependencies, even if a collection lists them as dependencies. These include test packages and packages that provide Ansible itself. The full list can be found in EXCLUDE_REQUIREMENTS in src/ansible_builder/_target_scripts/introspect.py.

If you need to include one of these ignored package names, use the --user-pip option of the introspect command to list it in the user requirements file. Packages supplied this way are not processed against the list of excluded Python packages.

Note

These dependencies are subject to the same PEP 508 format restrictions described for Python requirements in the EE definition specification.

System-level Dependencies

For system packages, use the bindep format to specify cross-platform requirements, so they can be installed by whichever package management system the execution environment uses. Collections should specify necessary requirements for [platform:rpm].

Ansible Builder combines system package entries from multiple collections into a single file.

  • Requirements with compile profile indicate that these requirements are needed to install other requirements (especially Python ones), but are not required to be in the final build.

  • Requirements with epel profile indicate that EPEL repositories will be enabled before installing these requirements.

  • Only requirements with no profiles (runtime requirements) are installed to the image.

Entries from multiple collections which are outright duplicates of each other may be consolidated in the combined file.