community.general/docs/docsite/rst/roadmap/ROADMAP_2_4.rst

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Ansible by Red Hat, Core 2.4
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Target: June/July 2017
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This is meant to be a living document, and is **DRAFT** until
stated otherwise in the document.

- **Python 2.4 and 2.5 support discontinuation**
  - Ansible will not support Python 2.4 nor 2.5 on the target hosts anymore. Going forward, Python 2.6+ will be required on targets, as already is the case on the controller.

- **Ansible-Config**
  - New yaml format for config
  - Extend the ability of the current config system by adding creating an ansible-config command and add the following:

    - Dump existing config settings

    - Update / write a config entry

    - Show available options (ini entry, yaml, env var, etc)

  - Proposal found in ansible/proposals issue `#35 <https://github.com/ansible/proposals/issues/35>`_.
  - Initial PR of code found in ansible/ansible PR `#12797 <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/12797>`_.

- **Inventory Overhaul**

  - Current inventory is overtly complex, non modular and mostly still a legacy from inception. We also want to add a common set of features to most inventory sources but are hampered by the current code base.
  - Proposal found in ansible/proposals issue `#41 <https://github.com/ansible/proposals/issues/41>`_.

- **PluginLoader Refactor**

  - Over the past couple releases we've had some thoughts about how
    PluginLoader might be better structured

    - Load the loaders via an initialization function(), not when importing
      the module. (stretch goal, doesn't impact the CLI)
    - Separate duties of PluginLoader from PluginFinder.  Most plugins need
      both but Modules and Module_utils only need a PluginFinder
    - Write different PluginFinder subclasses for Module_utils and perhaps
      Modules.  Most Plugin types have a flattened namespace and are single
      python files.  Modules include code that is not written in python.
      Module_utils are vastly different from the other Plugins as they
      maintain a hierarchical namespace and are multi-file.
    - Potentially split module_utils loader for python from module_utils
      loader for powershell.  Currently we only support generic module_utils
      for python modules.  The powershell modules always include a single,
      hardcoded powershell module_utils file.  If we add generic module_utils
      for powershell, we'll need to decide how to organize the code.

- **Facts Refreshening**

  - Make setup.py/facts more pluggable
  - Fact gathering policy finer grained
  - Improve testing of setup.py/facts.py

- **Cloud Provider Support**

  - Focus on pull requests for various modules
  - Triage existing merges

- **Contributor Quality of Life**

  - More bot improvements!