Highlighted new features:
* Added do-until feature, which can be used to retry a failed task a specified number of times with a delay in-between the retries.
* Added failed_when option for tasks, which can be used to specify logical statements that make it easier to determine when a task has failed, or to make it easier to ignore certain non-zero return codes for some commands.
* Added the "subelement" lookup plugin, which allows iteration of the keys of a dictionary or items in a list.
* Added the capability to use either paramiko or ssh for the initial setup connection of an accelerated playbook.
* Automatically provide advice on common parser errors users encounter.
* Deprecation warnings are now shown for legacy features: when_integer/etc, only_if, include+with_items, etc. Can be disabled in ansible.cfg
* The system will now provide helpful tips around possible YAML syntax errors increasing ease of use for new users.
* warnings are now shown for using {{ foo }} in loops and conditionals, and suggest leaving the variable expressions bare as per docs.
* The roles search path is now configurable in ansible.cfg. 'roles_path' in the config setting.
* Includes with parameters can now be done like roles for consistency: - { include: song.yml, year:1984, song:'jump' }
* The name of each role is now shown before each task if roles are being used
* Adds a "var=" option to the debug module for debugging variable data. "debug: var=hostvars['hostname']" and "debug: var=foo" are all valid syntax.
* Variables in {{ format }} can be used as references even if they are structured data
* Can force binding of accelerate to ipv6 ports.
* the apt module will auto-install python-apt if not present rather than requiring a manual installation
* the copy module is now recursive if the local 'src' parameter is a directory.
* syntax checks now scan included task and variable files as well as main files
New modules and plugins.
- cloud
* docker *- instantiates/removes/manages docker containers*
* ec2_eip *-- manage AWS elastic IPs*
* ec2_vpc *-- manage ec2 virtual private clouds*
* elasticcache *-- Manages clusters in Amazon Elasticache*
* ovirt *-- VM lifecycle controls for ovirt*
* rax_network *-- sets up Rackspace networks*
* rax_facts *-- retrieve facts about a Rackspace Cloud Server*
* rax_clb_nodes *-- manage Rackspace cloud load balanced nodes*
* rax_clb *-- manages Rackspace cloud load balancers*
- files
* acl *-- set or get acls on a file*
* synchronize *-- a useful wrapper around rsyncing trees of files*
* unarchive *-- pushes and extracts tarballs*
- system
* blacklist *-- add or remove modules from the kernel blacklist*
* firewalld *-- manage the firewalld configuration*
* hostname *-- sets the systems hostname*
* modprobe *-- manage kernel modules on systems that support modprobe/rmmod*
* open_iscsi *-- manage targets on an initiator using open-iscsi*
- utilities
* include_vars *-- dynamically load variables based on conditions.*
- packaging
* swdepot *-- a module for working with swdepot*
* urpmi *-- work with urpmi packages*
* zypper_repository *-- adds or removes Zypper repositories*
- notification
* grove *-- notifies to Grove hosted IRC channels*
- web_infrastructure
* ejabberd_user *-- add and remove users to ejabberd*
* jboss *-- deploys or undeploys apps to jboss*
- source_control
* github_hooks *-- manages GitHub service hooks*
- net_infrastructure
* bigip_monitor_http *-- manages F5 BIG-IP LTM http monitors*
* bigip_monitor_tcp *-- manages F5 BIG-IP LTM TCP monitors*
* bigip_node *-- manages F5 BIG-IP LTM nodes*
* bigip_pool_member *-- manages F5 BIG-IP LTM pool members*
* openvswitch_port
* openvswitch_bridge
Plugins:
* jail connection module (FreeBSD)
* lxc connection module
* added inventory script for listing FreeBSD jails
* added md5 as a Jinja2 filter: {{ path | md5 }}
* added a fileglob filter that will return files matching a glob pattern. with_items: "/foo/pattern/*.txt | fileglob"
* 'changed' filter returns whether a previous step was changed easier. when: registered_result | changed
* DOCS NEEDED: 'unique' and 'intersect' filters are added for dealing with lists.
* DOCS NEEDED: new lookup plugin added for etcd
* a 'func' connection type to help people migrating from func/certmaster.
Misc changes (all module additions/fixes may not listed):
* (docs pending) New features for accelerate mode: configurable timeouts and a keepalives for long running tasks.
* Added a `delimiter` field to the assemble module.
* Added `ansible_env` to the list of facts returned by the setup module.
* Added `state=touch` to the file module, which functions similarly to the command-line version of `touch`.
* Added a -vvvv level, which will show SSH client debugging information in the event of a failure.
* Includes now support the more standard syntax, similar to that of role includes and dependencies.
* Changed the `user:` parameter on plays to `remote_user:` to prevent confusion with the module of the same name. Still backwards compatible on play parameters.
* Added parameter to allow the fetch module to skip the md5 validation step ('validate_md5=false'). This is useful when fetching files that are actively being written to, such as live log files.
* Inventory hosts are used in the order they appear in the inventory.
* in hosts: foo[2-5] type syntax, the iterators now are zero indexed and the last index is non-inclusive, to match Python standards.
* There is now a way for a callback plugin to disable itself. See osx_say example code for an example.
* Many bugfixes to modules of all types.
* Complex arguments now can be used with async tasks
* SSH ControlPath is now configurable in ansible.cfg. There is a limit to the lengths of these paths, see how to shorten them in ansible.cfg.
* md5sum support on AIX with csum.
* Extremely large documentation refactor into subchapters
* Added 'append_privs' option to the mysql_user module
* Can now update (temporarily change) host variables using the "add_host" module for existing hosts.
* Fixes for IPv6 addresses in inventory text files
* name of executable can be passed to pip/gem etc, for installing under *different* interpreters
* copy of ./hacking/env-setup added for fish users, ./hacking/env-setup.fish
* file module more tolerant of non-absolute paths in softlinks.
* miscellaneous fixes/upgrades to async polling logic.
* conditions on roles now pass to dependent roles
* ansible_sudo_pass can be set in a host variable if desired
* misc fixes for the pip an easy_install modules
* support for running handlers that have parameterized names based on role parameters
* added support for compressing MySQL dumps and extracting during import
* Boto version compatibility fixes for the EC2 inventory script
* in the EC2 inventory script, a group 'EC2' and 'RDS' contains EC2 and RDS hosts.
* umask is enforced by the cron module
* apt packages that are not-removed and not-upgraded do not count as changes
* the assemble module can now use src files from the local server and copy them over dynamically
* authorization code has been standardized between Amazon cloud modules
* the wait_for module can now also wait for files to exist or a regex string to exist in a file
* leading ranges are now allowed in ranged hostname patterns, ex: [000-250].example.com
* pager support added to ansible-doc (so it will auto-invoke less, etc)
* misc fixes to the cron module
* get_url module now understands content-disposition headers for deciding filenames
* it is possible to have subdirectories in between group_vars/ and host_vars/ and the final filename, like host_vars/rack42/asdf for the variables for host 'asdf'. The intermediate directories are ignored, and do not put a file in there twice.