Ansible-core 2.20 Porting Guide 

This section discusses the behavioral changes between ansible-core 2.19 and ansible-core 2.20.

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.

Review this page and the ansible-core Changelog for 2.20 to understand necessary changes.

This document is part of a collection on porting. The complete list of porting guides can be found at porting guides.

The PowerShell module utilities no longer attempt to remove quotes from paths when performing Windows operations like copying and fetching files. This should not affect normal playbooks unless a value is quoted too many times. If you have playbooks that rely on this automatic quote removal, you will need to adjust your path formatting.

Engine 

No notable changes

Plugin API 

Removed Features 

The following previously deprecated features have been removed:

The DEFAULT_TRANSPORT configuration option no longer supports the smart value that selected the default transport as either ssh or paramiko based on the underlying platform configuration.
The vault and unvault filters no longer accept the deprecated vaultid parameter.
The ansible-galaxy command no longer supports the v2 Galaxy server API. Galaxy servers hosting collections must support v3.
The dnf and dnf5 modules no longer support the deprecated install_repoquery option.
The encrypt module utility no longer includes the deprecated passlib_or_crypt API.
The paramiko connection plugin no longer supports the PARAMIKO_HOST_KEY_AUTO_ADD and PARAMIKO_LOOK_FOR_KEYS configuration keys, which were previously deprecated.
The py3compat.environ call has been removed.
Vars plugins that do not inherit from BaseVarsPlugin and define a get_vars method can no longer use the deprecated get_host_vars or get_group_vars fallback.
The yum_repository module no longer supports the deprecated keepcache option.

Behavioral Changes 

The DataLoader.get_basedir method now returns an absolute path instead of a relative path. Plugin code that relies on relative paths may need adjustment.
Argument spec validation now treats None values as empty strings for the str type for better consistency with pre-2.19 templating conversions.
When using failed_when to suppress an error, the exception key in the result is now renamed to failed_when_suppressed_exception. This prevents the error from being displayed by callbacks after being suppressed. If you have playbooks that check for the exception in the result, update them as follows:

# Before
- command: /bin/false
  register: result
  failed_when: false

- debug:
    msg: "Exception was: {{ result.exception }}"
  when: result.exception is defined

# After
- command: /bin/false
  register: result
  failed_when: false

- debug:
    msg: "Exception was: {{ result.failed_when_suppressed_exception }}"
  when: result.failed_when_suppressed_exception is defined

Command Line 

Python 3.11 is no longer a supported control node version. Python 3.12+ is now required for running Ansible.
Python 3.8 is no longer a supported remote version. Python 3.9+ is now required for target execution.

Deprecated 

INJECT_FACTS_AS_VARS 

The INJECT_FACTS_AS_VARS configuration currently defaults to True, but this is now deprecated and it will switch to False in Ansible 2.24.

When enabled, facts are available both inside the ansible_facts dictionary and as individual variables in the main namespace. In the ansible_facts dictionary, the ansible_ prefix is removed from fact names.

You will receive deprecation warnings if you are accessing ‘injected’ facts. To prepare for the future default:

Update your playbooks to use the ansible_facts dictionary:

# Deprecated - will stop working in 2.24
- debug:
    msg: "OS: {{ ansible_os_distribution }}"

# Recommended - works in all versions
- debug:
    msg: "OS: {{ ansible_facts['distribution'] }}"
    # Note: 'ansible_' prefix is removed inside ansible_facts

Or explicitly enable the current behavior in your configuration:

In your ansible.cfg file:

[defaults]
inject_facts_as_vars = True

By exporting an environment variable:

export ANSIBLE_INJECT_FACT_VARS=True

Other Deprecations 

The vars internal variable cache will be removed in 2.24. This cache, once used internally, exposes variables in inconsistent states. The vars and varnames lookups should be used instead.
Specifying ignore_files as a string in the include_vars module is deprecated. Use a list instead:

# Deprecated
- include_vars:
    dir: vars/
    ignore_files: ".gitkeep"

# Correct
- include_vars:
    dir: vars/
    ignore_files: [".gitkeep"]

Modules 

Modules removed 

The following modules no longer exist:

No notable changes

Deprecation notices 

No notable changes

Noteworthy module changes 

The include_vars module now raises an error if the extensions parameter is not specified as a list. Previously, non-list values were silently accepted.
The include_vars module now raises an error if the ignore_files parameter is not specified as a list. Previously, string values were accepted but are now deprecated.
The replace module now reads and writes files in text-mode as unicode characters instead of as bytes, and switches regex matching to unicode characters instead of bytes. This may affect playbooks that rely on byte-level operations.

Ansible-core 2.20 Porting Guide 

Introduction 

Playbook 

Removed quote stripping in PowerShell operations 