Introduction

This module introduces the Ansible Development Tools workshop and walks you through launching your development environment in Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces. By the end, you will have a fully configured VS Code workspace with all the tools needed for the remaining labs.

Learning objectives

After completing this module, you will be able to:

Understand what Ansible Development Tools are and why they matter
Navigate the Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces interface
Launch and configure your Ansible development workspace
Verify the installed development tools

What are Ansible Development Tools?

Ansible Development Tools (often referred to as Ansible Dev Tools or ansible-dev-tools) are a curated bundle of command-line tools designed to support the entire Ansible content lifecycle.

These tools cover:

Project scaffolding (ansible-creator)
Local development environments (ade)
Linting and static analysis (ansible-lint)
Testing with ephemeral infrastructure (molecule, pytest-ansible, tox-ansible)
Content signing (ansible-sign)
Execution Environment creation (ansible-builder)
Execution and navigation (ansible-navigator)

Instead of assembling and maintaining these tools individually, the bundle provides known-good versions and predictable integration between tools. All contributors use the same tools and compatible versions, reducing environment-related issues.

In this workshop, you will use these tools through a consistent development workflow: Create, Test, and Deploy your automation content.

Lab environment

For this workshop, your development environment runs in Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces, which provides consistent, reproducible development environments based on the open-source project Eclipse Che.

Dev Spaces provides a VS Code environment configured by a devfile, a YAML file that defines the entire workspace as code, including all necessary tools, runtimes, and project source. This ensures every participant has an identical setup.

The lab environment includes:

Red Hat OpenShift cluster
Ansible Automation Platform
Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces (your development environment)
Gitea Git server
Lab instructions (this guide)

Lab tips

Before we begin, here are some tips to improve your lab experience:

The instructions sidebar (where you are reading this) can be resized by dragging its border. This is useful if you need extra space for the main panel.
If you receive any VS Code notification pop-ups, you can safely ignore and dismiss them by clicking x, Dismiss, or Ignore, unless otherwise noted.
Copy and pasting into the VS Code Terminal: The key combo Ctrl + Shift + V (Mac: Cmd + Shift + V) should work for pasting. If using Firefox, you can also use the right-click menu for Paste into the Terminal.
The lab consists of several Modules. Each module contains one or more Tasks. When you finish a module, click the Next button at the bottom of the instructions sidebar to proceed.

Task 1: Launch the Dev Spaces workspace

Launch the OpenShift Web Console
Select the htpasswd_provider button and use the credentials provided in the Environment Details page to log in to the OpenShift console
Use the 9-block icon in the upper right to launch Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces directly from the OpenShift console header

Alternatively, the direct URL is https://devspaces.{openshift_cluster_ingress_domain} also available in Environment Details.
The Ansible Dev Space workspace will start automatically. Wait a few minutes for the Dev Spaces instance to initialize.

When it has loaded, a Visual Studio Code interface will appear.
Click the Trust Publishers and Install button to trust the extension publishers that are included within the Dev Spaces workspace
Click the Yes, I trust the Authors button to trust the workspace authors
Wait a few minutes until the additional extension icons appear for Ansible and OpenShift on the left side

Task 2: Configure the extensions

Check the Extensions section in VS Code, look for the Ansible extension and click the blue Reload Window button to update to the latest version
Click on the Ansible extension icon in the left sidebar to verify the Ansible Development Tools extension is available

Task 3: Verify the development environment

The majority of the exercises in this lab will be performed using the VS Code terminal.

Open a new terminal by selecting the VS Code menu starting with the hamburger (3 horizontal lines) in the top left, then selecting Terminal → New Terminal

Verify the container OS release:

cat /etc/redhat-release

Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 9.7 (Plow)

Verify ansible and the development tools are available:
```
adt --version
```
The output will show the versions of all installed Ansible development tools. Versions may differ from the examples in the lab, this is expected.

Conclusion

In this module, you have:

Learned what Ansible Development Tools are and how they support the content lifecycle
Launched and configured your Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces workspace
Verified the development tools are installed and ready

This foundation prepares you for the remaining labs where you will create, test, and deploy Ansible automation content.

Contributing to this lab

If you see an error in this lab, fork and submit a pull request against https://github.com/rhpds/ansible-dev-tools-showroom