Ansible Changes By Release

0.4 "Unchained" ------- May 23, 2012

Internals/Core

internal inventory API now more object oriented, parsers decoupled
async handling improvements
misc fixes for running ansible on OS X (overlord only)
sudo improvements, now works much more smoothly
sudo to a particular user with -U/--sudo-user, or using 'sudo_user: foo' in a playbook
--private-key CLI option to work with pem files

Inventory

can use -i host1,host2,host3:port to specify hosts not in inventory (replaces --override-hosts)
ansible INI style format can do groups of groups [groupname:children] and group vars [groupname:vars]
groups and users module takes an optional system=yes|no on creation (default no)
list of hosts in playbooks can be expressed as a YAML list in addition to ; delimited

Playbooks

variables can be replaced like ${foo.nested_hash_key.nested_subkey[array_index]}
unicode now ok in templates (assumes utf8)
able to pass host specifier or group name in to "hosts:" with --extra-vars
ansible-pull script and example playbook (extreme scaling, remediation)
inventory_hostname variable available that contains the value of the host as ansible knows it
variables in the 'all' section can be used to define other variables based on those values
'group_names' is now a variable made available to templates
first_available_file feature, see selective_file_sources.yml in examples/playbooks for info
--extra-vars="a=2 b=3" etc, now available to inject parameters into playbooks from CLI

Incompatible Changes

Module Changes

tweaks to SELinux implementation for file module
fixes for yum module corner cases on EL5
file module now correctly returns the mode in octal
fix for symlink handling in the file module
service takes an enable=yes|no which works with chkconfig or updates-rc.d as appropriate
service module works better on Ubuntu
git module now does resets and such to work more smoothly on updates
modules all now log to syslog
enabled=yes|no on a service can be used to toggle chkconfig & updates-rc.d states
git module supports branch=
service fixes to better detect status using return codes of the service script
custom facts provided by the setup module mean no dependency on Ruby, facter, or ohai
service now has a state=reloaded
raw module for bootstrapping and talking to routers w/o Python, etc

Misc Bugfixes

0.3 "Baluchitherium" -- April 23, 2012

Packaging for Debian, Gentoo, and Arch
Improvements to the apt and yum modules
A virt module
SELinux support for the file module
Ability to use facts from other systems in templates (aka exported resources like support)
Built in Ansible facts so you don't need ohai, facter, or Ruby
tempdir selections that work with noexec mounted /tmp
templates happen locally, not remotely, so no dependency on python-jinja2 for remote computers
advanced inventory format in YAML allows more control over variables per host and per group
variables in playbooks can be structured/nested versus just a flat namespace
manpage upgrades (docs)
various bugfixes
can specify a default --user for playbooks rather than specifying it in the playbook file
able to specify ansible port in ansible host file (see docs)
refactored Inventory API to make it easier to write scripts using Ansible
looping capability for playbooks (with_items)
support for using sudo with a password
module arguments can be unicode
A local connection type, --connection=local, for use with cron or in kickstarts
better module debugging with -D
fetch module for pulling in files from remote hosts
command task supports creates=foo for idempotent semantics, won't run if file foo already exists

0.0.2 and 0.0.1