This chapter assumes that you have set up your control host with Ansible, as detailed in Chapter 1, Getting Started with Ansible, and that you are using the most recent version available. The examples in this chapter are tested with Ansible 2.9. This chapter also assumes that you have at least one additional host to test against; ideally, this should be Linux-based.

Although we will give specific examples of hostnames in this chapter, you are free to substitute them with your own hostname and/or IP addresses, and details of how to do this are provided at the appropriate places. The plugin development work covered in this chapter assumes the presence of a Python 2 or Python 3 development environment on your computer, and that you are running either Linux, FreeBSD, or macOS. Where additional Python modules are needed, their installation is documented. The task of building module documentation has some very specific requirements in Python 3.5 or later, so it is assumed you can install a suitable Python environment if you wish to attempt this.

The code bundle for this chapter is available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Ansible-2-Cookbook/tree/master/Chapter%206.