Red Hat Inc. has just announced the launch of the Ansible Galaxy project, an open-source code repository for DevOps where developers can find, share and re-use their Ansible work.

For those unfamiliar with Ansible, it’s an information technology automation tool that Red Hat acquired last year when it bought out the company behind it, AnsibleWorks Inc. Ansibe is a popular automation software that was first released in 2012. It helps to configure and manage computer and server nodes to manage deployment of software and run tasks, as well as taking care of configuration management and orchestration.

As for Ansible Galaxy, this is the new community hub where developers can share and search for Ansible Roles, which are pre-packaged, ready-to-run system admin tasks. So, for example, if you’re a developer looking to set up the Nginx server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or some other Linux server hosted in the cloud, you just open a Ansible Nginx role and it fires itself up and away.

More specifically, Ansible Roles are like content directories designed to enable the easy re-use, refactoring or sharing of process. Ansible Roles are also very portable across environments, teams and organizations, a kind of “common language” for Ansible functionality. Roles may also include handlers, files, templates, tasks, modules or variables. “Maybe you have a role for installing and configuring a popular software package, or a role for deploying software built by your company,” states the Ansible Galaxy website. “Whatever it is, use Galaxy to share it with the community.”

It’s also possible for developers to create their own private Galaxy Server, which allows them to use their own native Ansible Galaxy client with their own private Galaxy repository. Developers can also submit their own features and enhancements directly to the Ansible Galaxy codebase.

“Open source communities are where innovation happens,” said Tim Cramer, head of Ansible engineering at Red Hat. “The Ansible community is thriving, and Red Hat hopes that by open sourcing the Ansible Galaxy code repository, we will be able to advance open source automation technology, and specifically Ansible Galaxy, in new and interesting ways.”

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