Installing Ansible from source in RHEL7

Installing Ansible from source in RHEL7

By default git package is installed in RHEL 7.

You can install Ansible directly from the source. Installing from source does not require any root permissions. Let's clone a repository and activate virtualenv, which is an isolated environment in Python where you can install packages without interfering with the system's Python packages. The command and the resulting output for the repository is as follows:

[root@nsk nsk]# git clone git://github.com/ansible/ansible.git
Cloning into 'ansible'...
remote: Counting objects: 282962, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (9/9), done.
remote: Total 282962 (delta 2), reused 2 (delta 0), pack-reused 282953
Receiving objects: 100% (282962/282962), 91.03 MiB | 113.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (183996/183996), done.
[root@nsk nsk]#
.
[root@nsk nsk]# cd ansible/
[root@nsk ansible]# source ./hacking/env-setup
Ansible now needs setuptools in order to build. Install it using your package manager (usually python-setuptools) or via pip (pip install setuptools).

Setting up Ansible to run out of checkout...

PATH=/home/nsk/ansible/bin:/home/nsk/ansible/test/runner:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin
PYTHONPATH=/home/nsk/ansible/lib:
MANPATH=/home/nsk/ansible/docs/man:
Remember, you may wish to specify your host file with -i
Done!
[root@nsk ansible]#

Ansible needs a couple of Python packages, which you can install using pip. If you don't have pip installed on your system, install it using the following command. If you don't have easy_install installed, you can install it using Python's setuptools package on Red Hat systems, or by using Brew on the Mac:

[root@nsk ansible]# yum -y update
[root@nsk ansible]# cd ..
[root@nsk nsk]# curl "https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py" -o "get-pip.py"
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 1558k  100 1558k    0     0   104k      0  0:00:14  0:00:14 --:--:--  118k
[root@nsk nsk]# python get-pip.py
Collecting pip
  Downloading pip-9.0.1-py2.py3-none-any.whl (1.3MB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 1.3MB 113kB/s
Collecting setuptools
  Downloading setuptools-38.2.5-py2.py3-none-any.whl (489kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 491kB 115kB/s
Collecting wheel
  Downloading wheel-0.30.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (49kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 51kB 125kB/s
Installing collected packages: pip, setuptools, wheel
Successfully installed pip-9.0.1 setuptools-38.2.5 wheel-0.30.0

Once you have installed pip, install the paramiko, PyYAML, jinja2, and httplib2 packages using the following command lines:

[root@nsk nsk]# pip install paramiko PyYAML jinja2 httplib2
Collecting paramiko
  Downloading paramiko-2.4.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (192kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 194kB 127kB/s
Collecting PyYAML
  Downloading PyYAML-3.12.tar.gz (253kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 256kB 125kB/s
Collecting jinja2
  Downloading Jinja2-2.10-py2.py3-none-any.whl (126kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 133kB 126kB/s
Collecting httplib2
  Downloading httplib2-0.10.3.tar.gz (204kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 204kB 131kB/s
Collecting pyasn1>=0.1.7 (from paramiko)
  Downloading pyasn1-0.4.2-py2.py3-none-any.whl (71kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 71kB 117kB/s
Collecting bcrypt>=3.1.3 (from paramiko)
  Downloading bcrypt-3.1.4-cp27-cp27mu-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (57kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 61kB 174kB/s
Collecting cryptography>=1.5 (from paramiko)
  Downloading cryptography-2.1.4-cp27-cp27mu-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (2.2MB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 2.2MB 75kB/s
Collecting pynacl>=1.0.1 (from paramiko)
  Downloading PyNaCl-1.2.1-cp27-cp27mu-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (696kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 706kB 106kB/s
Collecting MarkupSafe>=0.23 (from jinja2)
  Downloading MarkupSafe-1.0.tar.gz
Collecting six>=1.4.1 (from bcrypt>=3.1.3->paramiko)
  Downloading six-1.11.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Collecting cffi>=1.1 (from bcrypt>=3.1.3->paramiko)
  Downloading cffi-1.11.2-cp27-cp27mu-manylinux1_x86_64.whl (405kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 409kB 124kB/s
Collecting enum34; python_version < "3" (from cryptography>=1.5->paramiko)
  Downloading enum34-1.1.6-py2-none-any.whl
Collecting asn1crypto>=0.21.0 (from cryptography>=1.5->paramiko)
  Downloading asn1crypto-0.24.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (101kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 102kB 123kB/s
Collecting idna>=2.1 (from cryptography>=1.5->paramiko)
  Downloading idna-2.6-py2.py3-none-any.whl (56kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 61kB 134kB/s
Collecting ipaddress; python_version < "3" (from cryptography>=1.5->paramiko)
  Downloading ipaddress-1.0.19.tar.gz
Collecting pycparser (from cffi>=1.1->bcrypt>=3.1.3->paramiko)
  Downloading pycparser-2.18.tar.gz (245kB)
    100% |████████████████████████████████| 256kB 138kB/s
Building wheels for collected packages: PyYAML, httplib2, MarkupSafe, ipaddress, pycparser
  Running setup.py bdist_wheel for PyYAML ... done
  Stored in directory: /root/.cache/pip/wheels/2c/f7/79/13f3a12cd723892437c0cfbde1230ab4d82947ff7b3839a4fc
  Running setup.py bdist_wheel for httplib2 ... done
  Stored in directory: /root/.cache/pip/wheels/ca/ac/5f/749651f7925b231103f5316cacca82a487810c22d30f011c0c
  Running setup.py bdist_wheel for MarkupSafe ... done
  Stored in directory: /root/.cache/pip/wheels/88/a7/30/e39a54a87bcbe25308fa3ca64e8ddc75d9b3e5afa21ee32d57
  Running setup.py bdist_wheel for ipaddress ... done
  Stored in directory: /root/.cache/pip/wheels/d7/6b/69/666188e8101897abb2e115d408d139a372bdf6bfa7abb5aef5
  Running setup.py bdist_wheel for pycparser ... done
  Stored in directory: /root/.cache/pip/wheels/95/14/9a/5e7b9024459d2a6600aaa64e0ba485325aff7a9ac7489db1b6
Successfully built PyYAML httplib2 MarkupSafe ipaddress pycparser
Installing collected packages: pyasn1, six, pycparser, cffi, bcrypt, enum34, asn1crypto, idna, ipaddress, cryptography, pynacl, paramiko, PyYAML, MarkupSafe, jinja2, httplib2
Successfully installed MarkupSafe-1.0 PyYAML-3.12 asn1crypto-0.24.0 bcrypt-3.1.4 cffi-1.11.2 cryptography-2.1.4 enum34-1.1.6 httplib2-0.10.3 idna-2.6 ipaddress-1.0.19 jinja2-2.10 paramiko-2.4.0 pyasn1-0.4.2 pycparser-2.18 pynacl-1.2.1 six-1.11.0
[root@nsk nsk]#

Note
By default, Ansible will be running against the development branch. You might want to check out the latest stable branch. Check what the latest stable version is using the following command line:

[root@nsk ansible]# git branch -a
* devel
  remotes/origin/HEAD -> origin/devel
  remotes/origin/devel
  remotes/origin/release1.5.0
  remotes/origin/release1.5.1
..
  remotes/origin/stable-2.0-network
  remotes/origin/stable-2.0.0.1
  remotes/origin/stable-2.1
  remotes/origin/stable-2.2
  remotes/origin/stable-2.3
  remotes/origin/stable-2.4
  remotes/origin/temp-staging-post-2.3.3
  remotes/origin/threading_instead_of_forking
  remotes/origin/threading_plus_forking
[root@nsk ansible]#

Copy the latest version you want to use. Version 2.4 was the latest version available at the time of writing. Check the latest version using the following command lines:

[root@nsk ansible]# git checkout stable-2.4
Branch stable-2.4 set up to track remote branch stable-2.4 from origin.
Switched to a new branch 'stable-2.4'

[root@nsk nsk]# ansible --version
ansible 2.4.3.0 (stable-2.3 8708105616) last updated 2017/12/28 08:55:50 (GMT +550)
  config file = None
  configured module search path = [u'/root/.ansible/plugins/modules', u'/usr/share/ansible/plugins/modules']
  ansible python module location = /home/nsk/ansible/lib/ansible
  executable location = /home/nsk/ansible/bin/ansible
  python version = 2.7.5 (default, Aug  4 2017, 00:39:18) [GCC 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-16)]

You now have a working setup of Ansible ready.

Note : One of the benefits of running Ansible from source is that you can enjoy the new features immediately, without waiting for your package manager to make them available for you.