How do I tell Ansible my collection does not support Python < 3.6?

[SHxKM]

We're currently working on a new collection that we'd eventually like to have included in ansible. We plan to host this collection in our own repo, and utilize the suggested Github action for sanity/unit tests. I'm not sure about a few things though:

1. Are there any tests that are Python 2 specific?
2. I assume that once we submit an inclusion request, at some point in ansible's deployment pipeline, the sanity/unit tests are going to be ran against our collection; is there a need to specify somewhere (except documentation) that the collection shouldn't support Python < 3.6?

[felixfontein]

Right now there isn't much except the documentation. For ansible-test included in ansible-core 2.12+, you can provide a config file: https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/test/lib/ansible_test/config/config.yml Simply place it in the tests/ directory of your collection.

If you plan to go through the inclusion process, you want to take a look at https://github.com/ansible-collections/overview/blob/main/collection_requirements.rst#python-compatibility which explains what we expect to be documented where.

[SHxKM]

Thanks @felixfontein! I've already went through that document (many times) and still implementing all the requirements, I have a follow-up on this snippet:

For example, if your collection supports Ansible 2.9 to ansible-core 2.13, the Python versions supported for modules are 2.6, 2.7, and 3.5 and newer (until at least 3.10), while the Python versions supported for plugins are 2.7 and 3.5 and newer (until at least 3.10). So if the modules in your collection do not support Python 2.6, you have to document this in the README, for example The content in this collection supports Python 2.7, Python 3.5 and newer..

Does that mean that in order to support Ansible 2.9, I need to also support Python 2.7? We simply cannot support Python 2.7 and I'm wondering about the various places that should be configured in..

[felixfontein]

No. It means that if your collection supports Ansible 2.9, but does not support Python 2.7 (or 2.6), you have to document it and you need a better reason than "we just don't like Python 2.7" ;-) ("Dependency X we are relying on does not support Python 2.7" is a valid reason.)

[tadeboro]

Does that mean that in order to support Ansible 2.9, I need to also support Python 2.7? We simply cannot support Python 2.7 and I'm wondering about the various places that should be configured in.

No, you do not have to support it. But if you do not, you must document this in the README file and possibly in each module. FOr example, this is what we have in our Sensu collection: https://github.com/sensu/sensu-go-ansible/blob/master/plugins/doc_fragments/requirements.py All modules then include this fragment which results in the documentation block at https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/sensu/sensu_go/asset_module.html#requirements

[tadeboro]

Hi @SHxKM

• Are there any tests that are Python 2 specific?

In general, no. There are some sanity checks that only run on Python 3, but you do not have to worry about those. ansible-test will do the right thing for you when running sanity tests.

• I assume that once we submit an inclusion request, at some point in ansible's deployment pipeline, the sanity/unit tests are going to be ran against our collection; is there a need to specify somewhere (except documentation) that the collection shouldn't support Python < 3.6?

The main thing you should do is make sure your sanity test pass. This means that running ansible-test sanity --docker passes without errors on all ansible-core versions your collection supports. Currently, you should test at least 2.11 and 2.12. Testing against the development version is also a good idea.

For ansible-core < 2.12, you will need to skip/ignore some tests in the tests/sanity/ignore-X.Y.txt. See https://github.com/sensu/sensu-go-ansible/blob/b25e63c945a922ce643f60ff6cae435600a3cf52/tests/sanity/ignore-2.10.txt for some examples. For 2.12, you can configure supported python versions in a single place like we did here: https://github.com/sensu/sensu-go-ansible/blob/master/tests/config.yml

[felixfontein]

@SHxKM I'm not sure what you mean with "/collections context"? Ansible 2.9 supports collections essentially the same way as ansible-base 2.10 and ansible-core 2.11 do (except that there is no plugin routing functionality, i.e. meta/runtime.yml is not supported).

[SHxKM]

Ok. Apologies. Let’s try again: I want to test my collection against Ansible 2.9 locally, what are the steps I need to take?

[felixfontein]

Install Ansible 2.9, and do the same you would do for testing with ansible-base 2.10 or ansible-core 2.11: run ansible-test <arguments> inside your collection root directory, which needs to be in the correct path structure (same as for 2.10 and 2.11).

[SHxKM]

And simply being inside the 2.9/2.10/2.11 venv dictates which Ansible version the tests are ran against?

[felixfontein]

Yes.

[SHxKM]

Thanks so much @tadeboro and @felixfontein! It's amazing the quality of help developers get around here!! I'll see you very soon because apart from the new collection we have some complicated deprecations to do in community.general. Thanks again!