Ansible 2.5 on the Horizon

Greetings Network Automation Nerds!

Just attended the Ansible 2.5 webcast for Network Partners. It seems to me that the changes in 2.4 were more behind the scenes, i.e. persistent SSH connections, while Ansible 2.5 will have more visible changes for network engineers who are writing Playbooks.

Ansible Networking Partner Webinar (December 18, 2017) Recording
Ansible 2.5 Porting Guide
Network Core Roadmap for 2.5


Here are a few of the takeaways for me, all welcome changes:

• Network automation continues to be more similar to other modules. For example, instead of specifying connection as local and use the provider method for network cli connections, in 2.5, you can specify network_cli or netconf as the connection. This allows the two connection methods to be used directly in shell. 
• More emphasis on Testing for network modules. "If it is not tested, it is broken", right? 
• More community building, such as https://github.com/network-automation. 

Here are some of the screenshots from the webcast on the connection method, testing, and community:

Happy Coding!

Eric