Porting Guides 2.4 (#24539)

* Porting Guides for Ansible Versions

Improve the user facing documentation.
Tell people what changes they need to make

* More porting guides

* Link porting guides from TOC

* Link porting guides from CHANGELOG.md

* typo in link

* Review feedback

* Better CHANGELOG links

* Better links

* code blocks

* Minor changes

* Correct links, comment out network section in 2.4

* Typos

* Revert non 2.4 changes

* Add placeholders for other items

* multiple inventory

* Update porting_guide_2.4.rst

* Update porting_guide_2.4.rst

* Update porting_guide_2.4.rst

* Update porting_guide_2.4.rst

* add win_command/win_shell escaping notes

* Added some windows porting info

* Edit for grammar

* Correct links, delete Net Platform Agnostic

* 2.5 link

* Network changes in 2.4

* facts_namespacing was pushed back to 2.5

Due to lack of time we pushed this back to 2.5 so that the facts in the namespace could be shortened.

* Python version

* Remove FIXMEs - move to seperate PR

docs/docsite/rst/porting_guide_2.4.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,115 @@
+.. _porting_2.4_guide:
+
+*************************
+Ansible 2.4 Porting Guide
+*************************
+
+This section discusses the behavioral changes between Ansible 2.3 and Ansible 2.4.
+
+It is intended to assist in updating your playbooks, plugins and other parts of your Ansible infrastructure so they will work with this version of Ansible.
+
+
+We suggest you read this page along with `Ansible Changelog <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/blob/stable-2.4/CHANGELOG.md#2.4>`_ to understand what updates you may need to make.
+
+This document is part of a collection on porting. The complete list of porting guides can be found at :ref:`porting guides <porting_guides>`.
+
+.. contents:: Topics
+
+Python version
+==============
+
+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.
+
+Playbook
+========
+
+Multiple inventory
+------------------
+
+**NEW** In Ansible 2.4:
+
+
+.. code-block:: shell
+
+   ansible-playbook -i /path/to/inventory1, /some/other/path/inventory2
+
+
+Deprecated
+==========
+
+Inventory argument
+-------------------------
+
+Use of ``--inventory-file`` is now deprecated. Use ``--inventory`` or ``-i``.
+
+
+Use of multiple tags
+--------------------
+
+Specifying ``--tags`` (or ``--skip-tags``) multiple times on the command line currently leads to the last one overriding all the previous ones. This behavior is deprecated. In the future, if you specify --tags multiple times the tags will be merged together. From now on, using ``--tags`` multiple times on one command line will emit a deprecation warning. Setting the ``merge_multiple_cli_tags`` option to True in the ``ansible.cfg`` file will enable the new behavior.
+
+In 2.4, the default has change to merge the tags. You can enable the old overwriting behavior via the config option.
+
+In 2.5, multiple ``--tags`` options will be merged with no way to go back to the old behavior.
+
+
+Other caveats
+-------------
+
+No major changes in this version.
+
+Modules
+=======
+
+Major changes in popular modules are detailed here
+
+* The :ref:`win_shell <win_shell>` and :ref:`win_command <win_command>` modules now properly preserve quoted arguments in the command-line. Tasks that attempted to work around the issue by adding extra quotes/escaping may need to be reworked to remove the superfluous escaping. See `Issue 23019 <https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/23019>`_ for additional detail.
+
+Modules removed
+---------------
+
+The following modules no longer exist:
+
+* None
+
+Deprecation notices
+-------------------
+
+The following modules will be removed in Ansible 2.8. Please update update your playbooks accordingly.
+
+* :ref:`azure <azure>`, use :ref:`azure_rm_virtualmachine <azure_rm_virtualmachine>`, which uses the new Resource Manager SDK.
+* :ref:`win_msi <win_msi>`, use :ref:`win_package <win_package>` instead
+
+Noteworthy module changes
+-------------------------
+
+* The :ref:`win_get_url <win_get_url>`  module has the dictionary ``win_get_url`` in its results deprecated, its content is now also available directly in the resulting output, like other modules. This dictionary will be removed in Ansible 2.8.
+* The :ref:`win_unzip <win_unzip>` module no longer includes the dictionary ``win_unzip`` in its results; the contents are now included directly in the resulting output, like other modules.
+
+
+Plugins
+=======
+
+No major changes in this version.
+
+Porting custom scripts
+======================
+
+No major changes in this version.
+
+Networking
+==========
+
+There have been a number of changes to how Networking Modules operate.
+
+Playbooks should still use ``connection: local``.
+
+Persistent Connection
+---------------------
+
+The configuration variables ``connection_retries`` and ``connect_interval`` which were added in Ansible 2.3 are now deprecated. For Ansible 2.4 and later use ``connection_retry_timeout``.
+
+To control timeouts use ``command_timeout`` rather than the previous top level ``timeout`` variable under ``[default]``
+
+See :ref:`Ansible Network debug guide <network_debug_troubleshooting>` for more information.
+