# Your Feedback Wanted: The Ansible Collection Developer and Maintainer Journey

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/your-feedback-wanted-the-ansible-collection-developer-and-maintainer-journey/44592>\
**Category:** Collection Development\
**Tags:** news-for-maintainers, ansible-creator, devtools, ansible-navigator, community-wg, adt, ansible-lint, ansible-builder\
**Created:** [October 1, 2025, 6:21am UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/your-feedback-wanted-the-ansible-collection-developer-and-maintainer-journey/44592 "2025-10-01T06:21:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

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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:** [October 2, 2025, 2:15pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/your-feedback-wanted-the-ansible-collection-developer-and-maintainer-journey/44592/4 "2025-10-02T14:15:49Z")

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Thanks for sharing this feedback. The experience you’re describing with `ansible-test`’s UX for collections is a known issue with a specific historical context.

The tool was originally designed to test `ansible-core`, not collections. [As occasionally mentioned here for sometime](https://forum.ansible.com/t/error-invalid-extension-official-ansible-modules-must-have/5719/4), the long-term plan was for `ansible-test` to remain focused on core, with a separate tool emerging for the collection ecosystem.

We’ve made significant progress toward that plan, resulting in the `ansible-development-tools` (ADT) suite and all of the individual tools it includes. (On a side note, I was happy to see your comment that the `ansible-dev-environment` (ADE) package helped you massively; I think it’s an incredibly valuable and often overlooked tool.) Tools from this suite, particularly **Molecule** , are specifically designed for testing collections and roles.

I feel that the gap you’re experiencing is that the community documentation hasn’t fully caught up to this shift. It still directs users to `ansible-test`, which leads to the friction you mentioned. [With an overhauled Molecule nearing completion](https://forum.ansible.com/t/help-test-molecule-v25-9-0-rc1-pre-release/44345), it might be a good time for the community to discuss updating the documentation to recommend Molecule as the standard tool for collection testing. Doing so could provide a clearer path and UX for developers.

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