Windows: community plan

This document lists various items discussed for future development

Ideas for new modules/plugins

• win_wait_for_event
• win_eventlog_query
• win_keyboard
• win_net_profile

Module development

• Good sources of info for picking up PowerShell
  • Add these to the Windows module documentation !
• Consider moving the ConfigureRemotingForAnsible.ps1 into a proper PS module which we could publish on the Powershell Gallery? That would allow us to break it down into manageable chunks and would also ease setup for nodes on PSv5 and higher (with access to the gallery). We'd need a very simple CI pipeline for this. (trondhindenes)
  • Install-module AnsibleSystemPrep -force;invoke-ansiblesystemprep
• CI testing on Windows 10 and Windows 2016 ! (dagwieers)
• Powershell coding style and CI testing (jborean93) #63
  • Implement in Shippable
  • Discuss configuration/rules
• Windows coverage support (mattclay)

Features

• Proxying WinRM and PSRP sessions over an HTTP proxy #44141
• Using SSH as a transport for Windows
• Decide what to do wrt. group policies (on standalone systems, driving AD ?) (dagwieers)
  • Found something to maybe build on, https://github.com/dlwyatt/PolicyFileEditor, use a c# implementation for reading and writing the pol file (dabondi)
  • Discussion about LGPO: #39633
• Decide what to do with functional lists of registry keys (dagwieers)
  • i.e. some have been proposed as modules #20992 (comment)
  • One or more roles with registry keys and vars to influence them
• Using Powershell on Unix/Linux (for DSC resources) - The post DSC Future Direction Update at PowerShell Team Blog
• Ansible threaded implementation (jhawkesworth)
  • Makes it possible to run Ansible on Windows natively, and helps conserve memory

Documentation

• Ansible Windows Powershell 'cookbook' / 1 liners
  • Would be great to capture some community experience as there are some things that are neatly achieved using a little powershell that don't necessarily have exact equivalents. (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/pull/25837) (dagwieers)
  • I guess making into a galaxy role is always an option but might be overkill for simple 1-liners like the above.
  • Add the following advice on Ansible service accounts #25298 (comment)

Clean up actions

For progress on module cleanup projects, look at our progress tracker

• Ensure all modules have integration tests, are idempotent and are full-featured.
  • We track legacy module issues in our progress tracker
• Bug/PR triage (lots of bugs are waiting for feedback or PRs for review)
  • We are now having meetings and doing sprints to tackle this problem. (dagwieers)
• Improve module_utils/powershell.ps1 (dagwieers)
  • Implement -type "dict" and -type "omap" (deferred)
  • Implement -type "psobject" (and use it for win_nssm) (trondhindenes)
  • Bring it more in line with the Python library #44705
    • failifempty -> required
    • validateset -> choices
    • add no_log option
• Clean up Windows roles:
  • Roles by popularity

Known issues

• A better way to map drives (currently win_mapped_drive does not work beyond isolated WinRM session) or maybe to reuse WinRM session ?