Ansible modules in community.general

[russoz]

Hi there,

I am one of the maintainers of the Ansible collection community.general [1], where we have eight modules related to ManageIQ[2].

These modules have been barely updated in recent years, other than generic adjustments made to multiple modules at once, and no one in our community seems to have much experience with ManageIQ itself. I was wondering if anyone here would be interested in giving some TLC to those modules, and in particular, to the manageiq_provider as it is not compliant with some of the standards[3] used in the code. I stalked the original developer in LinkedIn and he seems to have taken on a management position a couple of years ago and I have failed to get hold of him in any media. (Not that I tried much :-) )

So, in the short term I would like some help with that module, but in the long run, it would be nice if someone were to step up and maintain the manageiq-related stuff. We are a friendly bunch over there and I am sure I speak for the other maintainers that we will be more than happy to assist anyone interested in taking over those modules. Any takers? Thanks in advance for any help.

Cheers,

Alex

[1] https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.general
[2] https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.general/tree/main/plugins/modules/remote_management/manageiq
[3] https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.general/blob/main/tests/sanity/ignore-2.14.txt#L24-L27

[Fryguy]

Hi @russoz thanks for reaching out!

These modules were created when the core team (myself included) was still at Red Hat, but they weren't built by the core team, so we're not really familiar with them. I definitely remember them being written but I can't recall who built them or why... @jrafanie or @agrare do you remember?

We currently maintain 2 roles that we ship with ManageIQ, and are found here: https://galaxy.ansible.com/manageiq. The vmdb role there is essentially a way to query our API, so it's a bit more versatile than individual roles per object type. As such I don't see us maintaining these community roles, but I'd like to hear from @jrafanie , @kbrock , and @agrare for their opinion.

Recently, I also learned of an AWX inventory plugin (https://galaxy.ansible.com/haloss1/manageiq_inventory) by @haloss1, that was created now that CloudForms is no longer a part of AWX/Tower.

[russoz]

Any chance you or someone in the team might be able to provide some help fixing those sanity checks? Basically it boils down to having a detailed reference of the API. I tried searching for a swagger-like page with the ManageIQ API, but all I could find was the documentation page, which brings a number of examples, but I failed to find an API reference, parameter by parameter.

[Fryguy]

Yeah unfortunately we don't have a Swagger/OpenAPI-based API yet, though it is on the roadmap. Some day :)

[Fryguy]

We can take a look at them, yeah - if they aren't too hard, we can fix them up. Do you have a link showing the failures? Or even just documentation on what the sanity errors mean and how to correct them?

[russoz]

Hi @Fryguy thanks for the offer. I hadn't something ready to show, but you asking for it prompted me to write:
ansible-collections/community.general#5366

I think it probably makes more sense to work on that issue ticket there. Thanks in advance for any time you can spare on this.

[haloss1]

Hi, i'm the maintainer of the AWX inventory plugin, the plugin is fully functional, it gets all the hosts, tags and IP adresses from ManageIQ, i was using it at my previous job to run a job template in AWX from ManageIQ, running the job template didn't work at the time i think it was due to a bug with the buttons to call the action which i think it got fixed in newer ManageIQ versions, i haven't tested it since.
As far as i remember not all of the entries from the inventory example are implemented, the way i handle IP addresses is not ideal and i didn't document very well the plugin since it was mostly a PoC for my previous company.
If there's any interest in integrating it to one of the main collections i could help, just give a message, although the support from my part might be limited to doing it in my free time.
https://gitlab.com/Haloss1/manageiq_inventory/-/tree/main/

[russoz]

Thanks @haloss1! I think you might want to consider merging that plugin into the community.general collection, but you would become the maintainer of the plugin - and I cannot predict how much time that will demand. ;-)

[Fryguy]

Hi @haloss1! I pinged you to start a discussion and gets your thoughts on maybe moving your AWX plugin to the ManageIQ org and make it the official plugin. You could come over and still be owner/maintainer of it, but we could promote it as the "official way" to do inventories in AWX.

[haloss1]

Sorry for late response guys, let's chat @Fryguy https://cal.com/haloss1/open-source-chat