Changelog YAML Format

This describes the format which is required from collections which want to be included in the Ansible package if they want to have a nicely formatted changelog for their collection in the Ansible combined changelog.

The format is similar to the .changes.yaml file used internally by Ansible until 2.9.x (see here for an example). Concrete examples for collection changelogs with the new format described here can be found here and here.

Please remember that collection versions must use semantic versioning if included in the Ansible package or RedHat's Automation Hub.

You can use the antsibull-lint changelog-yaml tool to validate these files:

antsibull-lint changelog-yaml /path/to/changelog.yaml

(This only works for changelog.yaml files in collections, not for the corresponding files in ansible-core, since ansible-core currently does not conform to semantic versioning.)

The tool does not output anything and exits with exit code 0 in case the file is OK, and outputs errors and exits with exit code 3 in case an error was found. Other exit codes indicate problems with the command line or during the execution of the linter.

changelog.yaml

The file must be named changelogs.yaml and stored in the changelogs/ subdirectory of the collection root (i.e. the directory containing galaxy.yml). It must be a YAML 1.1 file.

At the top level, there are two entries:

A string ancestor, which can also be null or omitted if the changelog has no ancestor.
A dictionary releases, which maps version numbers to release information.

If ancestor is a string, it must be an existing version of the collection which precedes all versions mentioned in this changelog. This is used when the changelog is truncated, for example when using release branches like for ansible-core. There, the stable-2.10 branch's changelog contains only changelog entries for 2.10.x releases. Since the first 2.10.0b1 release contains all changes made to devel after stable-2.9 was branched, the ancestor for the 2.10 changelog is 2.9.0b1, the first release made after branching stable-2.9.

The following shows the outline of a changelog.yaml file with four versions:

ancestor: 0.5.4
releases:
  1.0.0-alpha:
    ...
  1.0.0-beta:
    ...
  1.0.0:
    ...
  1.0.1:
    ...

Release information

For a release x.y.z, the releases dictionary contains an entry x.y.z mapping to another dictionary. That dictionary can have the following entries:

release_date: a string in ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) specifying on which date the release was made.
codename: a string for the version's codename. Optional; mainly required for ansible-core.
fragments: a list of strings mentioning changelog fragment files used for this release. This is not used for compiling a changelog.
changes: a dictionary containing all changes. See below.
modules: a list of plugin dictionaries. See below.
plugins: a dictionary mapping plugin types to lists of plugin dictionaries. See below.
objects: a dictionary mapping object types to lists of object dictionaries. See below.

The following is an example of release information for version 1.0.0:

releases:
  1.0.0:
    release_date: '2020-04-01'
    codename: White Rabbit
    changes:
      release_summary: This is the initial White Rabbit release. Enjoy!
      major_changes:
        - The authentication method handling has been rewritten.
      minor_changes:
        - foo - Module can now reformat hard disks without asking.
        - bob lookup - Makes sure Bob isn't there multiple times.
      breaking_changes:
        - Due to the security bug in the post module, the module no longer accepts the password
          option. Please stop using the option and change any password you ever supplied to the
          module.
      deprecated_features:
        - foo - The bar option has been deprecated. Use the username option instead.
        - send_request - The quic option has been deprecated. Use the protocol option instead.
      removed_features:
        - foo - The baz option has been removed. It has never been used anyway.
      security_fixes:
        - post - The module accidentally sent your password in plaintext to all servers it could find.
      bugfixes:
        - post - The module made PUT requests instead of POST requests.
        - get - The module will no longer crash if it received invalid JSON data.
    modules:
      - name: head
        description: Make a HEAD request
        namespace: 'net_tools.rest'
      - name: echo
        description: Echo params
        namespace: ''
    plugins:
      lookup:
        - name: reverse
          description: Reverse magic
          namespace: null
      inventory:
        - name: docker
          description: Inventory plugin for docker containers
          namespace: null
    objects:
      role:
        - name: install_reqs
          description: Install all requirements of this collection
          namespace: null
      playbook:
        - name: wipe_personal_data
          description: Wipes all personal data from the database
          namespace: null

Changes

The changes dictionary contains different sections of the changelog for this version.

release_summary: a string summarizing the release. Should not be long text.
major_changes: a list of strings describing major changes. A release should not have many major changes. The changes described here should be large changes affecting several modules, and be changes that the users should better be aware of.
minor_changes: a list of strings describing minor changes. A minor change could be adding a module or plugin option.
breaking_changes: a list of strings describing breaking changes. This should list all breaking changes (which are not deprecated or removed features) which every user has to read when upgrading to find out what they have to change in their playbooks and roles. This is mainly what used to be in the Porting Guide for older Ansible versions. This should only appear for major releases (x.0.0) and pre-releases.
deprecated_features: a list of strings describing features deprecated in this release. This should only appear for major (x.0.0) or minor (x.y.0) versions.
removed_features: a list of strings describing features removed in this release. The features should have been deprecated earlier. This should only appear for major releases (x.0.0) as these are breaking changes.
security_fixes: a list of strings describing security-relevant bugfixes. If available, they should include the issue's CVE.
bugfixes: a list of strings describing other bugfixes.
known_issues: a list of strings describing known issues that are currently not fixed or will not be fixed.
trivial: a list of strings describing changes that are too trivial to show in the changelog.

Note that not every section has to be used. Also note that the sections deprecated_features, security_fixes and trivial have been added only after Ansible 2.9, and that trivial is special in the sense that changes in there will not be shown to the user.

Every of these sections - except release_summary - should contain a list of strings. Every string in this list, as well as the release_summary section itself, must be valid reStructuredText. Every string should be one line only, except for release_summary.

The changes dictionary could look as follows:

releases:
  1.0.0:
    changes:
      release_summary: |
        This is the initial White Rabbit release. Enjoy!
      major_changes:
        - The authentication method handling has been rewritten.
      minor_changes:
        - foo - Module can now reformat hard disks without asking.
        - bob lookup - Makes sure Bob isn't there multiple times.
      breaking_changes:
        - Due to the security bug in the post module, the module no longer accepts the password
          option. Please stop using the option and change any password you ever supplied to the
          module.
      deprecated_features:
        - foo - The bar option has been deprecated. Use the username option instead.
        - send_request - The quic option has been deprecated. Use the protocol option instead.
      removed_features:
        - foo - The baz option has been removed. It has never been used anyway.
      security_fixes:
        - post - The module accidentally sent your password in plaintext to all servers it could find.
      bugfixes:
        - post - The module made PUT requests instead of POST requests.
        - get - The module will no longer crash if it received invalid JSON data.

Plugins, modules and other objects

The modules list should a be list of module plugin descriptions. The plugins dictionary should map plugin types to lists of plugin descriptions. The objects dictionary is very similar to the plugins dictionary, except that it has different types.

Currently valid plugin types are:

become
cache
callback
cliconf
connection
httpapi
inventory
lookup
netconf,
shell
strategy
vars
filter (not yet documentable by ansible-doc)
test (not yet documentable by ansible-doc)

See DOCUMENTABLE_PLUGINS in https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/devel/lib/ansible/constants.py for a complete list of plugin types (minus modules).

Currently valid object types are:

role
playbook

For every module, plugin or object, the description is a dictionary with the following keys:

name: the name of the module resp. plugin. It must not be the FQCN, but the name inside the collection.
description: the value of short_description in the module's resp. plugin's DOCUMENTATION.
namespace: must be null for plugins and objects. For modules, must be '' for modules directly in plugins/modules/, or the dot-separated list of directories the module is in inside the plugins/modules/ directory. This is mostly relevant for large collections such as community.general and community.network. For example, the community.general.docker_container module is in the directory plugins/modules/cloud/docker/, hence its namespace must be cloud.docker. The namespace is used to group new modules by their namespace inside the collection.

The modules list, and the plugins and objects dictionary could look as follows:

releases:
  1.0.0:
    modules:
      - name: head
        description: Make a HEAD request
        namespace: 'net_tools.rest'
      - name: echo
        description: Echo params
        namespace: ''
    plugins:
      lookup:
        - name: reverse
          description: Reverse magic
          namespace: null
      inventory:
        - name: docker
          description: Inventory plugin for docker containers
          namespace: null
    objects:
      role:
        - name: install_reqs
          description: Install all requirements of this collection
          namespace: null
      playbook:
        - name: wipe_personal_data
          description: Wipes all personal data from the database
          namespace: null

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