# CfgMgmtCamp 2026 discussion (7/12): Collection testing is still a mess

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/cfgmgmtcamp-2026-discussion-7-12-collection-testing-is-still-a-mess/45294>\
**Category:** Collection Development\
**Tags:** cfgmgmgtcamp, windows, testing, ansible-test, molecule, collections, ansible-lint\
**Created:** [February 7, 2026, 9:01pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/cfgmgmtcamp-2026-discussion-7-12-collection-testing-is-still-a-mess/45294 "2026-02-07T21:01:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 8

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**Author:** ![tima](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/tima/32/854_2.png) [@tima](https://forum.ansible.com/u/tima)\
**Post date:** [March 21, 2026, 11:43pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/cfgmgmtcamp-2026-discussion-7-12-collection-testing-is-still-a-mess/45294/8 "2026-03-21T23:43:56Z")

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> [@felixfontein](#):
>
> The main tool for collection testing is still ansible-test. Unfortunately ansible-test doesn’t wants to be a tool for collection testing, it wants to be a tool for ansible-core testing. There has been talk about handing ansible-test off to another team to improve its collection testing parts for years. So far: nothing happened.

Stating that nothing has happened is not accurate. Three years ago we started building a comprehensive toolset specifically for collection development. That effort resulted in [the release of Ansible Development Tools (ADT)](https://forum.ansible.com/t/introducing-the-new-ansible-development-tools/6362).

To highlight just a few pieces, [we introduced ansible-creator](https://docs.ansible.com/projects/creator/installing/) and [modernized Molecule to more natively support collections](https://docs.ansible.com/projects/molecule/philosophy/). There is a lot more in ADT, including dedicated [pytest-ansible](https://github.com/ansible/pytest-ansible) and [tox-ansible](https://github.com/ansible/tox-ansible) plugins. The only outstanding feature we might be missing is “sanity” (a problematic term we need to discard) testing. Honestly, for me and some others, it is hard to gauge how much of that type of testing collections actually need versus ansible-core.

ADT is not perfect and we always welcome feedback. However, the tools are out there and actively maintained, so asserting that “nothing happened” is not accurate.

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