Official container images for ansible-builder for using in GitlabCI etc.?

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1

Dear ansible-builder maintainers and users,

I would like to build execution environments for AWX in my customer’s internal GitlabCI.

I got a working pipeline, the only step that is currently manual is the creation of the Containerfile by using ansible-builder. The reason for that is that according to the quay.io repository it is deprecated as of 3.0:

This Repository is Deprecated

With the release of Ansible Builder 3.0 and its ability to create Ansible Execution Environments from many different “stock” container images, the ansible-builder container images are no longer necessary. The contents of this repository are deprecated and will no longer be maintained.

So, how do other people run ansible-builder in pipelines?

Could this decision be revisited so official images for ansible-builder are available?

Sure, the definition of the execution environment is not likely to change daily, but having a manual step is something that might lead to errors later.

Thanks in advance!

Kind Regards,
Johannes

2

Hey @kastl-ars

We have a pipeline using AAP to build and push new EE images. Our builder EE was created from the podman image ( containers/podman · Quay) with ansible-core, ansible-runner and ansible-builder installed. Ironically, we use ansible-builder locally in WSL to create this container then push to Automation Hub (AAP 2.5). This is used with rootless podman to build and push new EE’s with some custom config files that live in the same repo as the EE files.

You should be able to use a different base container if you don’t need all the podman stuff for your pipeline.

I’m also curious how others are doing the EE build automation. Our process works but I feel it’s probably a bit complicated.

Best regards,

Joe

3

For now, to not be blocked, I also built my own ansible-builder image:

Has a shell and works in GitlabCI:

########################################################
ansible-builder_create:
  stage: create_configuration
  image:
    
    name: ghcr.io/kastl-ars/container_image_ansible_builder:main
    entrypoint: [""]
  tags:
    - linux
  script:
    - ansible-builder create -f my-ee.yml
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - context/

After that is another job running Kaniko to build the container image from the Dockerfile created in this step (and “saved” by the artifact section).

Kind Regards,
Johannes

4

The builder image on quay was from a time when builder, strangely enough, depended on itself. That’s no longer necessary as of version 3.0, so that repo will not be coming back.

If you want an image that contains builder, I’d look at using the dev-tools container, which should have builder and podman installed.

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5

Thanks @shrews, I’ll take a look.