Development

This section only needs to be read by developers of this project. People that want to make a fix or develop some extension, and people that want to test the project are also considered developers for the purpose of this section.

Repository

The repository for the IBM Z HMC collection is on GitHub:

https://github.com/zhmcclient/zhmc-ansible-modules

Setting up the development environment

The development environment is pretty easy to set up.

Besides having a supported operating system with a supported Python version (see Supported environments), it is recommended that you set up a virtual Python environment.

Then, with a virtual Python environment active, clone the Git repo of this project and prepare the development environment with make develop:

$ git clone git@github.com:zhmcclient/zhmc-ansible-modules.git
$ cd zhmc-ansible-modules
$ make develop

This will install all prerequisites the project needs for its development.

Generally, this project uses Make to do things in the currently active Python environment. The command make help (or just make) displays a list of valid Make targets and a short description of what each target does.

Building the documentation

The documentation for the IBM Z HMC collection is published on GitHub Pages at https://zhmcclient.github.io/zhmc-ansible-modules/.

That web site represents a defined set of versions of this collection and automatically gets updated whenever a pull request gets merged into the repository branch that corresponds to the version. The automatic update mechanism is implemented in the GitHub Actions workflow “publish” (in file .github/workflows/publish.yml).

The versions to be represented on that site are defined in docs/source/conf.py in the section for “sphinx-versioning”.

In order to build this “versioned” documentation locally, issue:

$ make docs

The top-level document to open with a web browser will be docs_build/index.html. Note that the versioned documentation is built from the defined branches, so it does not include the content of your Git work directory.

In order to see the effects of some change in your Git work directory, there is a second documentation build that builds an “unversioned” documentation from the content of your Git work directory:

$ make docslocal

The top-level document to open with a web browser will be docs_local/index.html; it is opened automatically when the documentation has been built successfully.

Testing

Again, an invocation of Make runs against the currently active Python environment.

There are four kinds of tests currently, available as make targets:

  • make check - Run flake8

  • make linkcheck - Check links in documentation

  • make sanity - Run Ansible sanity tests (includes flake8, pylint, validate-modules)

  • make check_reqs - Run pip-missing-reqs to perform missing dependency checks

  • make test - Run unit and function tests with test coverage

  • make end2end_mocked - Run end2end tests against a mocked environment

  • make end2end - Run end2end tests against an environment defined by TESTHMC

For the unit and function tests, the testcases and options for pytest can be specified via the environment variable TESTOPTS, as shown in these examples:

$ make test                                      # Run all unit and function tests
$ TESTOPTS='-vv' make test                       # Specify -vv verbosity for pytest
$ TESTOPTS='-k test_partition.py' make test      # Run only this test source file

The automated tests performed by Github Actions run on a standard set of test environments when a PR is created, and on the full set of test environments when a release is prepared and in addition on a weekly basis. See the .github/workflows/test.yml file for details.

These automated tests use all Ansible versions that are supported, but not in all combinations with all Python versions. Also, not all Python and Ansible version combinations are tested on all operating systems. For details, see the test matrix in the .github/workflows/test.yml file.

The following table shows for the full set of test environments which Ansible versions are tested on which Python versions. The ‘Packages’ column indicates whether the latest versions of Python packages are used (i.e. what pip installs by default, given the requirements.txt and dev-requirements.txt files), the minimum versions as defined in the minimum-constraint.txt file, or specific Ansible versions as defined in the ansible-constraint.txt file:

Python

Packages

Ansible

Ansible core

2.7

latest

4.x

2.11

3.5

latest

4.x

2.11

3.6

latest

4.x

2.11

3.7

latest

4.x

2.11

3.8

latest

6.x

2.13

3.9

latest

8.x

2.15

3.10

latest

8.x

2.15

3.11

latest

8.x

2.15

2.7

minimum

2.9

2.9

3.5

minimum

2.9

2.9

3.6

minimum

2.9

2.9

3.7

minimum

2.9

2.9

3.8

minimum

2.9

2.9

3.9

minimum

4.0

2.11

3.10

minimum

5.0

2.12

3.11

minimum

7.0

2.14

2.7

ansible

2.9

2.9

3.5

ansible

2.10

2.10

3.6

ansible

3.x

2.10

3.7

ansible

4.x

2.11

3.8

ansible

5.x

2.12

3.9

ansible

6.x

2.13

3.10

ansible

7.x

2.14

3.11

ansible

8.x+

2.15+

For reference, the following two tables show supported Python versions for Ansible versions and vice versa, for the Python and Ansible versions that are relevant for this collection. At the time of writing, the latest Python version is 3.11 and the latest Ansible version is 8.0.

Ansible

Ansible core

Supported Python versions

2.9

ansible 2.9

2.7, 3.5 - 3.8

2.10

ansible 2.10

2.7, 3.5 - 3.8

3

ansible-base 2.10

2.7, 3.5 - 3.8

4

ansible-core 2.11

2.7, 3.5 - 3.9 (1)

5

ansible-core 2.12

3.8 - 3.10 (2)

6

ansible-core 2.13

3.8 - 3.10 (2)

7

ansible-core 2.14

3.9 - 3.11+

8

ansible-core 2.15

3.9 - 3.11+

Python

Supported Ansible versions

2.7

2.9, 2.10, 3, 4

3.5

2.9, 2.10, 3, 4

3.6

2.9, 2.10, 3, 4

3.7

2.9, 2.10, 3, 4

3.8

2.9, 2.10, 3 - 6

3.9

4 - 8+

3.10

5 - 8+ (1)

3.11

7 - 8+ (2)

Notes:

  • (1) The sanity test of Ansible 4 supports Python only up to 3.9, so Python 3.10 requires at least Ansible 5.

  • (2) The sanity test of Ansible 5 and 6 supports Python only up to 3.10, so Python 3.11 requires at least Ansible 7.

Releasing a version

This section shows the steps for releasing a version to Ansible Galaxy.

It covers all variants of versions that can be released:

  • Releasing a new major version (Mnew.0.0) based on the master branch

  • Releasing a new minor version (M.Nnew.0) based on the master branch

  • Releasing a new update version (M.N.Unew) based on the stable branch of its minor version

This description assumes that you are authorized to push to the remote repo at https://github.com/zhmcclient/zhmc-ansible-modules and that the remote repo has the remote name origin in your local clone.

Any commands in the following steps are executed in the main directory of your local clone of the zhmc-ansible-modules Git repo.

  1. Set shell variables for the version that is being released and the branch it is based on:

    • MNU - Full version M.N.U that is being released

    • MN - Major and minor version M.N of that full version

    • BRANCH - Name of the branch the version that is being released is based on

    When releasing a new major version (e.g. 1.0.0) based on the master branch:

    MNU=1.0.0
MN=1.0
BRANCH=master

    When releasing a new minor version (e.g. 0.9.0) based on the master branch:

    MNU=0.9.0
MN=0.9
BRANCH=master

    When releasing a new update version (e.g. 0.8.1) based on the stable branch of its minor version:

    MNU=0.8.1
MN=0.8
BRANCH=stable_${MN}

  2. Create a topic branch for the version that is being released:

    git checkout ${BRANCH}
git pull
git checkout -b release_${MNU}

  3. Edit the Galaxy metadata file:

    vi galaxy.yml

    and set the ‘version’ parameter to the version that is being released:

    version: M.N.U

  4. Edit the change log:

    vi docs/source/release_notes.rst

    and make the following changes in the section of the version that is being released:

    • Finalize the version.

    • Change the release date to today’s date.

    • Make sure that all changes are described.

    • Make sure the items shown in the change log are relevant for and understandable by users.

    • In the “Known issues” list item, remove the link to the issue tracker and add text for any known issues you want users to know about.

    • Remove all empty list items.

  5. Commit your changes and push the topic branch to the remote repo:

    git commit -asm "Release ${MNU}"
git push --set-upstream origin release_${MNU}

  6. On GitHub, create a Pull Request for branch release_M.N.U.

    Important: When creating Pull Requests, GitHub by default targets the master branch. When releasing based on a stable branch, you need to change the target branch of the Pull Request to stable_M.N.

    The PR creation will cause the “test” workflow to run. That workflow runs tests for all defined environments, since it discovers by the branch name that this is a PR for a release.

  7. On GitHub, once the checks for that Pull Request have succeeded, merge the Pull Request (no review is needed). This automatically deletes the branch on GitHub.

    If the PR did not succeed, fix the issues.

  8. On GitHub, close milestone M.N.U.

    Verify that the milestone has no open items anymore. If it does have open items, investigate why and fix.

  9. Publish the collection to Ansible Galaxy

    git checkout ${BRANCH}
git pull
git branch -D release_${MNU}
git branch -D -r origin/release_${MNU}
git tag -f ${MNU}
git push -f --tags

    Pushing the new tag will cause the “publish” workflow to run. That workflow builds the collection, publishes it on Ansible Galaxy, creates a release for it on Github, and finally creates a new stable branch on Github if the master branch was released.

  10. Verify the publishing

  11. Publish the collection to Ansible AutomationHub

    This needs to be done in addition to the prior publish step, and it has not successfully been automated as of today.

    You need to have an account on https://console.redhat.com, and your userid there needs to be authorized to modify the ‘ibm’ namespace.

    • Build the distribution archive locally:

    make dist

    Attention!! This only works once for each version. You cannot re-release the same version more than once.

    Verify that the import on Ansible AutomationHub succeeded, by checking the status at https://console.redhat.com/ansible/automation-hub/my-imports?namespace=ibm (you need to log in).

    After the import succeeded, the release must still be approved by RedHat before it is published, so the approval status should now show “waiting for approval”.

    The RedHat team should approve the release within a day or so. Once it has been approved, the new version will be visible on Ansible AutomationHub at https://console.redhat.com/ansible/automation-hub/repo/published/ibm/ibm_zhmc .

Starting a new version

This section shows the steps for starting development of a new version.

These steps may be performed right after the steps for Releasing a version, or independently.

This section covers all variants of new versions:

  • Starting a new major version (Mnew.0.0) based on the master branch

  • Starting a new minor version (M.Nnew.0) based on the master branch

  • Starting a new update version (M.N.Unew) based on the stable branch of its minor version

This description assumes that you are authorized to push to the remote repo at https://github.com/zhmcclient/zhmc-ansible-modules and that the remote repo has the remote name origin in your local clone.

Any commands in the following steps are executed in the main directory of your local clone of the zhmc-ansible-modules Git repo.

  1. Set shell variables for the version that is being started and the branch it is based on:

    • MNU - Full version M.N.U that is being started

    • MN - Major and minor version M.N of that full version

    • BRANCH - Name of the branch the version that is being started is based on

    When starting a new major version (e.g. 1.0.0) based on the master branch:

    MNU=1.0.0
MN=1.0
BRANCH=master

    When starting a new minor version (e.g. 0.9.0) based on the master branch:

    MNU=0.9.0
MN=0.9
BRANCH=master

    When starting a new minor version (e.g. 0.8.1) based on the stable branch of its minor version:

    MNU=0.8.1
MN=0.8
BRANCH=stable_${MN}

  2. Create a topic branch for the version that is being started:

    git checkout ${BRANCH}
git pull
git checkout -b start_${MNU}

  3. Edit the change log:

    vi docs/source/release_notes.rst

    and insert the following section before the top-most section, and update the version to a draft version of the version that is being started:

    Version M.N.U-dev1
------------------

This version contains all fixes up to version M.N-1.x.

Released: not yet

Availability: `AutomationHub`_, `Galaxy`_, `GitHub`_

**Incompatible changes:**

**Deprecations:**

**Bug fixes:**

**Enhancements:**

**Cleanup:**

**Known issues:**

* See `list of open issues`_.

.. _`list of open issues`: https://github.com/zhmcclient/zhmc-ansible-modules/issues

  4. Edit the Galaxy metadata file:

    vi galaxy.yml

    and update the version to a draft version of the version that is being started:

    version: M.N.U-dev1

    Note: The version must follow the rules for semantic versioning 2.0 including the description of development/alpha/etc suffixes, as described in https://semver.org/

  5. Commit your changes and push them to the remote repo:

    git commit -asm "Start ${MNU}"
git push --set-upstream origin start_${MNU}

  6. On GitHub, create a Pull Request for branch start_M.N.U.

    Important: When creating Pull Requests, GitHub by default targets the master branch. When starting a version based on a stable branch, you need to change the target branch of the Pull Request to stable_M.N.

  7. On GitHub, create a milestone for the new version M.N.U.

    You can create a milestone in GitHub via Issues -> Milestones -> New Milestone.

  8. On GitHub, go through all open issues and pull requests that still have milestones for previous releases set, and either set them to the new milestone, or to have no milestone.

  9. On GitHub, once the checks for the Pull Request for branch start_M.N.U have succeeded, merge the Pull Request (no review is needed). This automatically deletes the branch on GitHub.

  10. Update and clean up the local repo:

    git checkout ${BRANCH}
git pull
git branch -D start_${MNU}
git branch -D -r origin/start_${MNU}