# Introducing Ansible Container **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Project\ **Created:** [June 2, 2016, 3:49pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/introducing-ansible-container/21646 "2016-06-02T15:49:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Greg\_DeKoenigsberg1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/838e76/32.png) [@Greg\_DeKoenigsberg1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Greg_DeKoenigsberg1)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 3:49pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/introducing-ansible-container/21646/1 "2016-06-02T15:49:36Z")
Many thanks to Joshua Ginsberg and Chris Houseknecht of Ansible for starting this new project: [https://github.com/ansible/ansible-container](https://github.com/ansible/ansible-container) Still in its infancy, so please take it for a spin and let us know how it works for you. Patches and bug reports encouraged. What does it do, exactly? Permit me to crib from the excellent README.md: Ansible Container is a tool to build Docker images and orchestrate containers using only Ansible playbooks. It does this by building a container from which to execute Ansible and connects to your other containers via the Docker engine instead of SSH. And when you're ready to deploy to the cloud, use Ansible Container's shipit command to generate an Ansible Role that deploys your application. The role is generated from your project's docker-compose file, leveraging the time and work already invested in Docker compose. Why not just use standard Docker tools? \* A Dockerfile is not much more than a script with hand-crafted shell commands. We're well past the point where we should be managing build processes with manually maintained series of shell scripts. That's why we wrote Ansible in the first place, and this is just as applicable to containers. \* Ansible Container permits orchestration even during the build process, whereas docker build does not. For example, in a Django project, your VCS may contain a bunch of sources for static assets that need to be compiled and then collected. With Ansible Container, you can compile the static assets in your Django container and then collect them into your static file serving container. \* Many people use Docker for development environments only but then use Ansible playbooks to push out to staging or production. This allows you to use the same playbooks and roles in your Docker dev environment as in your production environments. \* Ansible Container does all of this without installing SSH, leaving Ansible artifacts on your built images, or having excess layers to the union filesystem. \* When you're ready to deploy to the cloud, Docker compose leaves you with only one option. Ansible Container's shipit command enables the deployment of your app on a number of cloud infrastructures without you having to write a single line of code. Try it out! --g ---
**Author:** ![Chris\_Short](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ac8455/32.png) [@Chris\_Short](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Chris_Short)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 3:54pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/introducing-ansible-container/21646/2 "2016-06-02T15:54:30Z")
This sounds great! ---
**Author:** ![Clement\_VALENTIN](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@Clement\_VALENTIN](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Clement_VALENTIN)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 4:02pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/introducing-ansible-container/21646/3 "2016-06-02T16:02:59Z")
Good news !! I try since yesterday to plug ansible to my docker + container 😛 I try ansible-container tomorow 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_DeKoenigsberg1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/838e76/32.png) [@Greg\_DeKoenigsberg1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Greg_DeKoenigsberg1)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2016, 4:34pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/introducing-ansible-container/21646/4 "2016-06-02T16:34:17Z")
If it breaks, you get to keep both halves 🙂 (But seriously, thanks for trying it out, please give us feedback) ---
**Author:** ![mike\_hepburn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@mike\_hepburn](https://forum.ansible.com/u/mike_hepburn)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 9:22am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/introducing-ansible-container/21646/5 "2016-06-07T09:22:40Z")
hi greg - any idea why i would get this error when running ansible-container build from the test directory ? “ImportError: No module named docker.engine” tried this on ubuntu @ fedora - same issue. Cheers Mike ---
**Author:** ![Greg\_DeKoenigsberg1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/838e76/32.png) [@Greg\_DeKoenigsberg1](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Greg_DeKoenigsberg1)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 1:11pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/introducing-ansible-container/21646/6 "2016-06-07T13:11:38Z")
Did you install Docker-compose? ---
**Author:** ![Vincent\_Van\_der\_Kuss](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/7c8e57/32.png) [@Vincent\_Van\_der\_Kuss](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Vincent_Van_der_Kuss)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 1:26pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/introducing-ansible-container/21646/7 "2016-06-07T13:26:07Z")
Hi Mike, take a look at this: [https://github.com/ansible/ansible-container/commit/6856643b49a40d0b057ea43b42a97837a1e5a2c4](https://github.com/ansible/ansible-container/commit/6856643b49a40d0b057ea43b42a97837a1e5a2c4) Vincent ---
**Author:** ![mike\_hepburn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@mike\_hepburn](https://forum.ansible.com/u/mike_hepburn)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2016, 9:44pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/introducing-ansible-container/21646/8 "2016-06-07T21:44:07Z")
thanks vincent, that fixed it for me. i also needed recent version of docker-py pip install -U docker-py=1.7.1 to avoid: ImportError: cannot import name create\_ipam\_config [https://github.com/docker/compose/issues/2792](https://github.com/docker/compose/issues/2792) Thanks Mike ---
**Author:** ![Ramkumar\_GN](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7feea3/32.png) [@Ramkumar\_GN](https://forum.ansible.com/u/Ramkumar_GN)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2016, 4:03pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/introducing-ansible-container/21646/9 "2016-07-05T16:03:31Z")
Hi, I am trying out ansible-container to orchestrate containers on a k8s cluster… I am seeing the below error during the shipit stage: Any help will be appreciated … #ansible-container --debug shipit kube --pull-from Cleaning up temporary directory /tmp/tmpsX8ySy… Creating role path /\/example/ansible/roles/example-kubernetes Rendering template for test/test.j2.yml shipit\_role/test.j2.yml Traceback (most recent call last): File “/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible\_container-0.1-py2.7.egg/container/cli.py”, line 154, in commandline getattr(engine, u’cmdrun\_{}'.format(args.subcommand))(\*\*vars(args)) File “/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible\_container-0.1-py2.7.egg/container/engine.py”, line 337, in cmdrun\_shipit shipit\_engine\_obj.run() File “/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible\_container-0.1-py2.7.egg/container/shipit/kubernetes/engine.py”, line 28, in run self.init\_role() File “/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible\_container-0.1-py2.7.egg/container/shipit/base\_engine.py”, line 139, in init\_role \*\*context) File “/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/ansible\_container-0.1-py2.7.egg/container/utils.py”, line 68, in jinja\_render\_to\_temp j2\_tmpl = j2\_env.get\_template(template\_file) File “/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/jinja2/environment.py”, line 812, in get\_template return self.\_load\_template(name, self.make\_globals(globals)) File “/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/jinja2/environment.py”, line 774, in \_load\_template cache\_key = self.loader.get\_source(self, name)[1] File “/usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/jinja2/loaders.py”, line 187, in get\_source raise TemplateNotFound(template) TemplateNotFound: shipit\_role/test.j2.yml