Hi all, just wanted to announce/remind people about the upcoming repo merge.

The Plan:
-------------------------------------------------

Next week, we'll be re-merging the module repositories back into
ansible/ansible on GitHub. The two module repos will be essentially locked,
though they will be kept in place for the existing 2.1 and 2.2
dependencies. Once 2.2 moves out of official support (in about a year),
we'll completely remove those repositories. Until then, any issues/PRs
opened there will be auto-closed with a note to open it on ansible/ansible.

Why Are We Doing This (Again...)?
-------------------------------------------------

For those who've been using Ansible long enough, you know that originally
we started with a single repository. The original intention of the core vs.
extras split was that core would be better supported/tested/etc. Extras
would have been a bit more of a "wild-west" for modules, to allow new
modules to make it into the distribution more quickly. Unfortunately this
never really worked out, as well as the following:

1. Many modules in the core repo were also essentially "grand-fathered" in,
despite not having a good set of tests or dedicated maintainers from the
community.
2. The time in queue for modules to be merged into extras was not really
any different from the time to merge modules into core.
3. The split introduced a few other problems for contributors such as
having to submit multiple related PRs for modules with tests, or for those
which rely on action plugins.
4. git submodules are notoriously complicated, even for contributors with
decent git experience. The constant need to update git submodule pointers
for devel and each stable branch can lead to testing surprises and really
buys us nothing in terms of flexibility.
5. Users can already be confused about where to open issues, especially
when the problem appears to be with a module but is actually an action
plugin (ie. template) or something more fundamental like includes. Having
everything back in one repo makes it easier to link issues, and you're
always sure to open a bug report in the right place.

Issues and PRs:
-------------------------------------------------

We're working on creating a tool which will allow users to migrate their
issues from ansible-modules-core and ansible-modules-extras, details of
that will be available next week as well. PRs will be a bit more tricky,
though we are working on a script/process to make it easier for users to
move their PRs from the existing repos into the ansible/ansible code base
post-merge, however in most cases PRs will need to be resubmitted or left
in the respective module repository until we can revisit them ourselves.

Metadata - Support/Ownership and Module Status:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

As part of this move, we will be introducing module metadata, which will
contain a couple of pieces of information regarding modules:

1. Support Status: This field indicates who supports the module, whether
it's the core team, the community, the person who wrote it, or if it is an
abandoned module which is not receiving regular updates. The Ansible team
has gone through the list of modules and we have marked about 100 of them
as "Core Supported", meaning a member of the Ansible core team should be
actively fixing bugs on those modules. The vast majority of the rest will
be community supported. This is not really a change from the status quo,
this just makes it clearer.
2. Module Status: This field indicates how well supported that module may
be. This generally applies to the maturity of  the module code however, not
necessarily its bug status.

The documentation pages for modules will be updated to reflect the above
information as well, so that users can evaluate the status of a module
before committing to using it in playbooks and roles.

Summary:
-------------------------------------------------

For the vast majority of Ansible end-users, we expect this change to have
little impact. The impact on developers will definitely be higher, though
we're really trying to make it much smoother than when we made the original
split.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this, please be sure to let
us know ASAP.

Thanks!

James Cammarata

Ansible Lead/Sr. Principal Software Engineer
Ansible by Red Hat
twitter: @thejimic, github: jimi-c

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