Happy Halloween, IBM z/OS Ansible Core 1.8.0-beta.1 has released to Galaxy and is available in GitHub. In the spirit of Halloween, the team has brought everyone a amazing treat and in this release included a new zos_script module, enhancements and bug fixes. Today, we will discuss the noteworthy changes and when the release is generally available (GA), we will dive deeper into all the changes.
New Module
The latest zos_script module is capable of running REXX, Python and Shell when the scripts are either on the control node or on the z/OS managed node. The module can securely transfer the script, remove it on completion and if necessary, ensure the correct encodings are used. In the previous release blog , we discussed the latest Jinja templating and provided some use cases, now this powerful templating capability has been made available to the zos_script module allowing you to generate dynamic content, reduce redundancy and minimize both syntax, and source errors. What a great treat this is!
Enhancements
While there has been a number of enhancements, the most notable and ones I encourage everyone to explore are the enhancements for the zos_copy module. The module now supports copying executables such as program objects and load modules, ensures that aliases are retained and if the source contains ASA carriage control characters, they are preserved. There is more, now the module can forcibly copy into a data set which is in use by another process using the option force_lock.
ASA control characters are printing command characters generally not visible but used to control the movement of text through printers or log readers. These new options are:
- asa_text
- executable
- aliases
- force_lock
I recommend reading over the release notes as well as the changelog, this will provide you an understanding of the all the changes and known issues.
Have a Happy Halloween.
Authors
Resources
IBM Ansible z/OS core on Galaxy
IBM Ansible Core Collection Repository on GitHub
IBM Ansible Core Collection on Automation Hub
Red Hat® Ansible Certified Content for IBM Z documentation