Can’t speak for everyone, but I am looking for a statement more substantive from an AWX developer about… well, anything.
4 Likes
I think we all know that. If you noticed, though, the latest AWX release is dated 2024, and without a release, AWX is just a github repository for the downstream Tower.
2 Likes
Thanks for your reply, I’m aware of the Ansible/Red Hat ecosystem.
What I, and most, if not everyone here is looking for, is an answer or at least more information regarding what exactly is happening with Ansible AWX. The refactoring has been announced well over a year now, and it’s been (pretty much) silent since then.
With the FOSS-spirit in mind, I don’t think anyone here is looking for a hard date or anything you can expect or demand as a paying customer. It would however be nice, as a community member, to get an update on Ansible AWX, and check-in with the community once every now and then afterwards.
9 Likes
I completely agree some communication from within would be welcome. However, as I indicated back in September, looking at the commits in the AWX devel branch is reassuring. Real, significant work continues to be committed to the AWX repo.
Let’s be careful not to misinterpret lack of communication as a sky-is-falling scenario. This thread feels very much like an echo chamber.
# Quick-n-dirty activity check
utoddl@tango:~/src/awx$ cat /tmp/foo
printf "Commits in September 2025: %3d\n" "$(git log --since=2025-09-01 --before=2025-10-01 --oneline | wc -l)"
printf "Commits in October 2025: %3d\n" "$(git log --since=2025-10-01 --before=2025-11-01 --oneline | wc -l)"
printf "Commits in November 2025: %3d\n" "$(git log --since=2025-11-01 --before=2025-12-01 --oneline | wc -l)"
printf "Commits in December 2025: %3d\n" "$(git log --since=2025-12-01 --before=2026-01-01 --oneline | wc -l)"
printf "Commits in January 2026: %3d\n" "$(git log --since=2026-01-01 --oneline | wc -l)"
utoddl@tango:~/src/awx$ . /tmp/foo
Commits in September 2025: 70
Commits in October 2025: 15
Commits in November 2025: 12
Commits in December 2025: 12
Commits in January 2026: 14
utoddl@tango:~/src/awx$ git remote -vv
origin git@github.com:ansible/awx.git (fetch)
origin git@github.com:ansible/awx.git (push)
(See https://github.com/ansible/awx/commits/devel/ for details.)
6 Likes
I just started scrolling through the commits and landed on one commit message that (paraphrasing) said the code was generated by Claude AI.
I’m not a huge fan of AI, but setting that aside, how is code generated by Claude licensed? Can AI generated code be said to be free of end-user-agreements?
If awx is being refactored, “devel” commit counts are not likely to indicate the size or nature of any work in progress. I’d expect it to be in branches, or personnel branches, as the code is re-arranged. Using a single branch to handle refactoring and ongoing patches is by different developers is something I’ve done, and it gets pretty painful pretty fast.
1 Like
Like @utoddl I also agree that communication should be better handled in this case. But I also agree with his call for caution on interpreting the signs here. Sometimes no news are just… no news. But we only know for sure after we have updates. We are still missing on those.
That being said,
There’s been some discussions about this in Ansible AI Policy? - not sure whether the AWX team is following that or not (if we cannot get them to update the status of the refactor, I am not holding my breath they will stop and digress about how they are using LLMs).
Respectfully, that’s quite a jump to an inference based on too little information. The fact that the commits are in the main/devel branch does not mean they were not worked out in other branches before merging, so please hold your horses.
And whilst I cannot vouch for most of the developers in the “Ansible-sphere” individually (I can do that for some) nor for most of the specific teams, I am confident that some basic practices are in place, including working in branches.
1 Like
Is there another branch than “devel” where the planned refactoring is happening? I’d love to glance at that branch or branches to understand the planned changes.
I don’t see a guideline for branches or patch submissions that might help ensure modularity and ease merges during refactoring work. Would one be welcome?
1 Like
That would need to come from the AWX team. I have no visibility of that either.
For anyone here, or anyone who found this through an online search: check the post below for the answer to this topic.
6 Likes
When we first announced our plans to streamline AWX releases, we made it clear that our goal isn’t to offer an exact replica of our commercial product for free. Instead we want to define the future of AWX with input and direct collaboration from the community.
Forgive my skepticism, but it sounds a little like a repeat of the CentOS to CentOS Stream transition (except maybe worse, because at least Stream can be a somewhat useful stand-in for RHEL)?
(Edit: the point being, many community members do just want “free Tower”, basically, and will be forced to use a third party tool in lieu of a supported first party option. I don’t pretend to understand the intricacies of Red Hat’s situation, but it feels like one of those “first you came for CentOS, and I said nothing, then you came for AWX, and I said nothing. Now you come for Ansible…”).
I still hold out hope Ansible releases won’t go this way.
6 Likes
Sorry but when you say Ansible here do you mean ansible-core or the ansible community package, as in pip install ansible?
Both, but most especially core.
1 Like
I’m struggling a little to find a way to give this the emphasis that it deserves but, basically, I cannot envision any way that there would be drastic changes to releases for either of those projects. 
Edit to clarify my meaning.
2 Likes
Good.
I’ll write off AWX-as-local-Tower as a short-lived experiment (with a tinge of sadness), and maybe recommend people go back to Jenkins again if they want a simple self-hosted Ansible runner.
2 Likes
My 2c here is writing anything off might be somewhat premature. The ask for the community to help define the future of AWX is genuine. From the other post:
When Red Hat initially open sourced the Tower codebase as AWX, there had been little to no community development or input. Now that we’re done with the refactoring effort, we see this as an opportunity to do things differently.
I hope you dont mind me asking. What makes you possibly recommend people going (back) to Jenkins instead of keep using AWX?
Maybe we’re odd, but we use AWX, Jenkins, and gitlab runners. We have git hooks that start Jenkins jobs that fire off Ansible jobs, and AWX jobs that reach out the Jenkins. I see no compelling reasons to drop any of those tools…
1 Like
@BoerBart I guess for > 95% of non-(enterprise|large organization) usage using something like Jenkins or Buildbot with maybe ARA (for nicer logs) is totally sufficient from a functionality point of view. If you have a GitLab instance, you can also use GitLab CI (+ ARA). Such a setup is easier to set up and maintain than AWX recently was and currently is.
(I’ve been using Buildbot and GitLab CI to run Ansible for quite a long time in the past.)
3 Likes
Thanks, that gives me a nice insight from your point of view. I’ve introduced Ansible AWX in combination with GitLab (which was barely used at my department) to get rid of a ton of manual labour, which is still very much in the works, but does a great job already. Maybe there’s a good reason to switch to Jenkins, though i’d much rather prefer staying with AWX.