Windows: community plan

This document lists various items discussed for future development

Module development

• Good sources of info for picking up powershell
• Document how to debug now that KEEP_REMOTE_FILES no longer works (or Matt might be working on fixing this?) (trondhindenes)
• 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)
• Improve module development checklist for Windows (@dagwieers)
• Thoughts on good practices for module writing (e.g. coding standard) (jborean93) #63
  • Select a Windows reference module (win_environment) #20505 (@dagwieers)
• Powershell coding style and CI testing (jborean93) #63
  • Implement in Shippable
  • Discuss configuration/rules
• Windows coverage support (mattclay)

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.
  • For example this trick for importing a .pfx certificate into Window's certificate store: #14387 (comment)
    • There is a win_certificate module for doing exactly this: #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)

• Decent Examples for Windows Usage on Document Page, when i started with Ansible(working in mostly windows company) we where pretty much building always our on module stuff because the aviable Galaxyroles and Modules are not feature complete or extreme buggy.

  • Would help if someone will tell me where to put, we are in the same situation that most stuff avil not realy works for us, and we building custom roles and so on (daBondi)

• DSC documentation with insights, recommendations and examples (trondhindenes)

  • DSC examples by trondhindenes
  • DSC built-in Windows resources
  • DSC built-in Linux resources

• Maybe a community wiki for it, mostly stuff for windows is shooting out a ps command to the host and there are not really feature complete roles for it, i always found something really annoying missing.

• Mutually reference Windows and non-Windows modules in their documentation (@dagwieers) #25482

Clean up actions

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

• Bug/PR triage (lots of bugs are waiting for feedback or PRs for review)

  • All open issues in ansible-modules-core and ansible-modules-extras have been reviewed, closed or migrated to ansible/ansible
  • Open issues/PRs in ansible/ansible keep growing steadily :-(
    • From my PoV the Issues are not getting closed, we need more ppl with Rights to close issues, every time i got some sparetime i scan trough it but cannot find anything i could work on :-), most of them Open and waiting for answers of the issuer (@daBONDi)
    • Agreed, there are a lot of older issues that either are not relevant anymore or duplicated issues, probably need a cleanup at some point.
    • 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
    • failifempty -> required
    • validateset -> choices
    • add no_log option

• Clean up Windows roles:

  • Roles by popularity

The future

• Decide what to do wrt. group policies (on standalone systems, driving AD ?) (@dagwieers)
• 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
• Running Ansible on Windows (WSL) as control master (@dagwieers)
• Using SSH as a transport for Windows
• Using Powershell on Unix/Linux (for DSC resources)
• DSC-based modules
  • Ship win_dsc5, win_lcm, win_oneget as default, but need a little rewrite (trondhindenes) #24872
    • There should be very little reason to adjust the LCM since the *-DscResrouce cmdlets no longer requires it (trondhindenes)
  • DSC Module to Execute a Hole configuration, so you could jinja2 a dsc config out and execute it on the client (daBondi)
  • Focus on DSC i think it will be a good call because looks like microsoft is forcing it, with current Powershell Integration in Ansible, is like writing a DSC Resource on its own for Ansible, maybe make a strong Support for DSC (@daBondi)
    • What i found out, also most DSC Modules are also buggy as hell, and need constant fixing. And the NDA Stuff on Github for this Microsoft DSC Modules, also don't help them, but the Ecosystem is surly a GOTO (@daBONDi]
• Ansible threaded implementation (jhawkesworth)
  • Makes it possible to run Ansible on Windows natively, and helps conserve memory