Before I suggested at the end of last year to give a “rant talk about what currently really sucks about how Ansible is going (from my point of view)”, I noted down some points I could mention during such a talk. Since right now it looks like it will rather be a discussion, that could also include other topics, or skip some of mine altogether, I wanted to expand on my original notes (including some suggestions I got afterwards) and make them public so nothing gets lost.
I’ve split this document up in several sections for different point of views. My goal is to describe the problem as objectively as possible, and also to provide ideas of how things can be improved (that are realistic).
Some points are also ones that affect me in particular, and might not affect (m)any other users/developers/… I’ve mentioned that explicitly (when I’m aware 
).
I have posted this originally as a GitHub Gist. It was suggested to me at CfgMgmtCamp 2026 to publish this on the Forum as well so that it is easier to discuss these topics.
I split the document up into multiple posts. This post is a “summary” that links to all of them.
Table of contents
-
As a user:
- CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (1/12): Supported Python versions, or: supporting older Operating Systems
- CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (2/12): Big changes don't seem to be properly tested
- CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (3/12): Big breaking changes come with no explanation of why they are happening
- CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (4/12): Speaking about deprecations (and warnings in general)
- CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (5/12): Supported ansible-core versions when installing collections
- CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (6/12): Collection documentation on Ansible Galaxy is incomplete and partially confusing
-
As a collection maintainer and developer:
- CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (7/12): Collection testing is still a mess
- CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (8/12): Instant Ansible-test target updates without announcements
- CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (9/12): Deprecations and ansible-test
- CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (10/12): Publishing community collections, and Zuul
- CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (11/12): Features are removed without public discussion or known good reason
- CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (12/12): Deprecation of behavior before providing alternatives
Communication
One common theme you might have noticed is communication.
When talking about communication, another big topic is “Is there a future for AWX?” on the Ansible Forum. Several months and many comments later, there still hasn’t been an official statement. (This changed a few days after writing this:
there’s now “AWX modernization: Moving forward”.) At least some Red Hat employees did comment (thanks a lot to Don and Brian!)
I’m still hoping that this was simply very bad communication from Red Hat and the AWX team,
and not a sign that something is going to be really bad. I think Red Hat should really be able to do better than this.