Develop automation content in your workspace

The Ansible development tools are installed as part of the Ansible extension in the Ansible development workspace. You can use Ansible development tools to scaffold directories for automation content in your repository.

Using the Ansible extension ensures that best practices for directory structure are met.

Red Hat recommends that you create only one collection per repository, so that each collection has a clear, specific purpose. This approach promotes reusability, as each collection is a self-contained unit of content. A one-to-one relationship between a collection and its repository also improves manageability by simplifying dependency management, maintenance, and release cycles.

Create collections and playbooks in your Ansible development workspace
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Use the Ansible extension in VS Code to use Ansible development tools to scaffold directories and files for your automation content. You can use Red Hat Ansible Lightspeed with IBM watsonx Code Assistant to help you write playbooks, and ansible-lint to debug them.

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Procedure
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  1. In the OpenShift Dev Spaces dashboard. select the Ansible development workspace where you want to develop automation content.
  2. In the Activity bar of VS Code, select the Ansible icon to open Ansible development tools.
  3. Select Connect in the Ansible Lightspeed section to log in to Ansible Lightspeed.
  4. Select an option in the initialize section of Ansible Development tools to scaffold files and directories for a collection project or a playbook project.

    For more information on creating projects, see:

  5. Select options in the Add section of Ansible development tools to add files for playbooks or roles to your project. Alternatively, you can use the options in the Ansible Lightspeed section to generate playbooks or roles.
  6. Save your work:
    1. Click the main menu icon in the Activity bar and select Terminal > New Terminal.
    2. Use git add and git commit commands to stage the changed files and commit your changes to the local repository in the workspace.
    3. Use the git push command to push your updates to your remote Git repository.

Edit and debug automation content in your Ansible development workspace
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You can continue to work in an existing workspace. Workspaces that are inactive might be paused due to an administrator-set timeout to free up resources. However, they will automatically relaunch when you select them from the OpenShift Dev Spaces dashboard.

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The administrator in OpenShift Dev Spaces configures the duration of this inactivity timeout. Additionally, Ansible lint will identify errors within your playbooks.

Procedure
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  1. To display your previously created workspaces, select Workspaces in your OpenShift Dev Spaces dashboard.
  2. Select Open next to the workspace that you want to use.
  3. Select the Explorer icon in the Activity bar to open the file explorer, and open the file you want to edit.
  4. While you are editing, the Ansible extension provides suggestions. Select a suggestion from the dropdown list to include it in your playbook.
  5. To view documentation for a keyword or a module, hover your mouse over it.
  6. Open the terminal in VS Code: click the main menu icon in the Activity bar and select Terminal > New Terminal.
  7. Select the Problems tab in the terminal to view issues that ansible-lint has identified.

    In the following example, one error is selected in the Problems tab, and the corresponding line in the playbook is highlighted.


    Playbook and ansible-lint messages
  8. When you have resolved the problems in your playbook, a message is displayed in the Problems tab of the terminal.

Execute playbooks in your Ansible development workspace
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Execute your playbooks using the integrated Ansible extension or ansible-navigator within the VS Code environment of your workspace.

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With the introduction of full container-in-container support, you can seamlessly use execution environments within Ansible development workspaces. Tools such as ansible-navigator and ansible-builder are fully supported for executing playbooks and building custom execution environments directly from your browser-based workspace.

Procedure
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  1. To execute a playbook using the Ansible extension, right-click on a playbook name in the file explorer and select Run ansible playbook via > Run ansible playbook via ansible playbook.
  2. Alternatively, to execute a playbook using ansible-navigator with an execution environment, open a terminal in VS Code and run: 
    ansible-navigator run your_playbook.yml

Configure ansible-navigator for execution environments
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Customize ansible-navigator settings in your Ansible development workspace to configure execution environment options, logging, and output format.

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The ansible-navigator tool uses a YAML configuration file to define settings for execution environments, container engines, and output behavior. An example ansible-navigator.yaml file is available in the Ansible Development Workspace Sample repository.

Procedure
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  1. In your Ansible development workspace, create a file named ansible-navigator.yaml in the root of your project directory.
  2. Add the following minimal configuration and modify it to suit your requirements: 
    ansible-navigator:
  execution-environment:
    container-engine: podman
  logging:
    level: critical
  playbook-artifact:
    enable: false

    The Ansible dev spaces image includes a default execution environment. You only need to add additional settings such as environment-variables, volume-mounts, or container-options if your project requires them.

  3. Optional: To override the default execution environment image, add the image setting under the execution-environment section: 
      execution-environment:
    image: registry.redhat.io/ansible-automation-platform-27/ee-supported-rhel9:latest
  4. Save the file. The ansible-navigator tool automatically loads the configuration from the current working directory or from the default locations.

    For more information about ansible-navigator settings, see ansible-navigator settings in the ansible-navigator documentation.

Share your work
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Share your automation content and collaborate with colleagues by working together from a single shared Git repository and submitting pull requests.

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Procedure
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  1. To contribute to a colleague's project, request the URL for the Git repository that corresponds to your colleague's Ansible development workspace.
  2. Launch a workspace using the repository URL that your colleague shared.
  3. Work within a new git branch and contribute to your colleague's repository by creating a merge or pull request.