Introduction to Ansible Development Tools
IMPORTANT TO NOTE
This is the extended version of this workshop (~3 hours). For the shorter 2 hour session please 🔬 click here
This comprehensive workshop covers the full Ansible content development lifecycle — from scaffolding a collection in VS Code, through writing and testing custom modules with Molecule, pytest-ansible, and tox-ansible, to building execution environments with ansible-builder and signing content with ansible-sign. The lab uses Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces as the development environment.
After finishing this lab you are ready to start creating, testing, and distributing production-quality Ansible content.
IMPORTANT TO NOTE: This is NOT a deep dive, in the weeds, advanced workshop — it’s an introduction.
Workshop Resources
| Resource | Link |
|---|---|
| Workshop content and exercises | rhpds.github.io/ansible-dev-tools-showroom |
| Lab source repository | github.com/rhpds/ansible-dev-tools-showroom |
| Presenter instructions and guide | Presenter instructions and guide |
Who is this workshop best for?
This workshop is the comprehensive version of the Ansible Development Tools workshop. For the condensed 2-hour introduction, see Getting Started with Ansible Development Tools in VS Code. The intended audience is anyone who writes Ansible automation and wants to learn the full content development lifecycle — from scaffolding through testing, packaging, and signing. This workshop includes additional exercises on tox-ansible test orchestration that are not in the shorter version.
Target audience
Ansible developers, automation engineers, DevOps engineers, platform engineers, systems administrators, and anyone interested in building and testing Ansible content.
Attendee Prerequisites
- A basic understanding of working with Linux systems
- A basic understanding of Ansible (playbooks, modules, roles)
- A basic understanding of Visual Studio Code. [Available for MacOS, Windows and Linux]
- Must bring/use a laptop with Chrome 73+, Firefox 60+, Edge 40+, or Safari 12+ installed
There is no student prep work required prior to the workshop. It is recommended to complete the free Red Hat training course Ansible Basics: Automation Technical Overview.
Presentation Deck
- Google Slides - For Red Hat employees
Lab provisioner
This lab environment is available via the Red Hat Demo Platform under the Introduction to Ansible Development Tools catalog item.
Lab Index (Estimate total time ⏱️ 3 hours)
Introduction
| Activity | Link | Estimated Time |
|---|---|---|
| Slides: Introduction + Workshop Brief | 🖥️ Google Slides | ⏱️ 10 minutes |
| Exercise 0 — Introduction and environment setup | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 15 minutes |
Module 1 — Create
| Activity | Link | Estimated Time |
|---|---|---|
| Exercise 1.1 — Creating a collection with the Ansible extension for VS Code | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 10 minutes |
| Exercise 1.2 — Using the Ansible development environment tool (ade) | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 15 minutes |
| Exercise 1.3 — Adding a module to a collection | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 15 minutes |
☕ Break — ⏱️ 15 minutes
Module 2 — Test
| Activity | Link | Estimated Time |
|---|---|---|
| Exercise 2.1 — Testing a collection with Ansible Molecule | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 20 minutes |
| Exercise 2.2 — Functional testing with pytest-ansible | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 15 minutes |
| Exercise 2.3 — Orchestrating tests with tox-ansible | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 15 minutes |
☕ Break — ⏱️ 15 minutes
Module 3 — Deploy
| Activity | Link | Estimated Time |
|---|---|---|
| Exercise 3.1 — Creating an Execution Environment with ansible-builder | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 20 minutes |
| Exercise 3.2 — Introducing supply chain security with ansible-sign | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 10 minutes |
| Exercise — Workshop conclusion: What's next? | 🚀 Launch Exercise | ⏱️ 5 minutes |
| Slides: Close Out & Q&A | 🖥️ Google Slides | ⏱️ 5 minutes |
Demos
Any of the individual labs (that make up the workshop) can be used as a standalone demo.
Learning Resources
Documentation
Going Further
Additional material for Ansible Development Tools
| Title | Type | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Ansible Automation Platform Self-Paced Labs | Interactive labs | 🔬 Self-Paced Labs |
| Red Hat Training and Certification for AAP | Training | 📖 Training Catalog |
| Get a Trial Subscription for AAP | Trial | 🧪 Start Trial |
Ansible Workshop
This is an official Ansible Workshop
This workshop is maintained by the Red Hat Ansible Technical Marketing Team.
Please open an issues on Github
