For the 2019.1 Ansible Manager release, there are a few notable changes. In the vast majority of cases, these changes are not breaking conditions; however, in case your configuration is affected, it is important that you are aware of the following information.
File Changes in properties.yml
The module_path property has been removed. In replacement, the module directory location is discovered through installation of the Ansible environment. This adds the capability of specifying multiple module paths. For more information, see:
- Verify Install of Prerequisites in Installing Ansible Manager 2019.1
- Configuring Module Search Paths in Configuring Ansible Manager 2019.1
Additionally, the role_path and playbook_path properties now accept a list of directories.
Variable Storage Change for 2018.3 Installations
This release stores the JSON type sent into Ansible Manager's "internal inventory mode", and will store strings, numbers, booleans, nulls, arrays and objects as they are passed into variable storage for device inventory.
All data stored by Ansible Manager 2018.3 (and older versions) was stored as strings. Therefore, all number and boolean data types were converted to a string as it was being stored within Ansible Manager. Objects and arrays would have caused an error and not been stored. Hence, the consuming application would receive these values as strings.
Upon installation and upgrade of Ansible Manager, all data will be migrated as strings. Of note, there is one issue that might occur if data is not migrated, but instead imported via a script (e.g., as an integer). Once imported, the new data will be stored in the same format as it was presented to Ansible Manager via the API. Likewise, the new data will be returned to the user in the format it was presented. Therefore, any consuming applications that previously expected data in the form of strings will now be presented with data in the format in which it was imported (i.e., as a number).
Strings will continue to behave as they always have. Some consuming apps might not be equipped to consume this data type change. The simplest fix is to modify the incoming data to always be strings.