# RFC: Execution Environments for Ansible Automation **URL:** \ **Category:** Ansible Developer\ **Tags:** awx, ee\ **Created:** [October 12, 2020, 1:35pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/rfc-execution-environments-for-ansible-automation/34009 "2020-10-12T13:35:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![maxamillion](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/maxamillion/32/98_2.png) [@maxamillion](https://forum.ansible.com/u/maxamillion)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2020, 1:35pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/rfc-execution-environments-for-ansible-automation/34009/1 "2020-10-12T13:35:43Z")
Hello ansible-devel!     Today the Ansible Engineering Team would like to announce an idea we’ve been working on called “Execution Environments” which we are introducing in order to garner feedback and contributions from the community. We hope this is the start of an ongoing discussion with the community as we iterate on the ideas outlined below. What are Execution Environments?     Execution Environments are a unified and opinionated strategy for executing Ansible automation jobs in containers[0] via Ansible Runner[1]. This is slated to be an easy way to run playbooks locally on your laptop, workstation, control host, or (in the future) Ansible Tower/AWX. This is accomplished using container image(s) as a consistent base layered with Ansible Core, Ansible Runner, Ansible Collection Content, and whatever dependencies the plugins and modules therein may require. This will decouple the software installed on any particular computer from that which is required for each set of Ansible Collections, their python dependencies, and any potential binary dependencies. The methodology we plan to implement here is to use a new tool called Ansible Builder[2] that manages the definition, creation, and management of Execution Environments; and then Using Ansible Runner[1] to take advantage of the resulting Execution Environment. In summary, Ansible Builder builds them and Ansible Runner runs them. Execution Environments will be OCI compliant container images[3] and technically don’t require Ansible Runner, but the goal of Ansible Runner is to be a consistent entry point that handles the opinionated execution. We would like people to take an opportunity to test out this new functionality to build an Execution Environment using Ansible Builder[4] and then running playbooks and adhoc commands with Ansible Runner’s new playbook and adhoc subcommands[5]. If you’re interested in doing this, please consult each project’s development branch documentation[5][6][2][7]. We would like to highlight that this is still under heavy development, is being iterated upon, and we would be grateful for feedback and contributions from the community to help shape this as we move forward. Thank you, -AdamM (On behalf of Ansible Engineering) [0] - [https://opencontainers.org/](https://opencontainers.org/) [1] - [https://ansible-runner.readthedocs.io/en/stable/](https://ansible-runner.readthedocs.io/en/stable/) [2] - [https://ansible-builder.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://ansible-builder.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) [3] - [https://github.com/opencontainers/image-spec](https://github.com/opencontainers/image-spec) [4] - [https://ansible-builder.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage.html](https://ansible-builder.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage.html) [5] - [https://ansible-runner.readthedocs.io/en/devel/execution\_environments.html](https://ansible-runner.readthedocs.io/en/devel/execution_environments.html) [6] - [https://github.com/ansible/ansible-runner/blob/devel/CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/ansible/ansible-runner/blob/devel/CONTRIBUTING.md) [7] - [https://github.com/ansible/ansible-builder/blob/devel/CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/ansible/ansible-builder/blob/devel/CONTRIBUTING.md)