ansible-role-ntp | Ansible Role - NTP | Date Time Utils library

In order to test ansible roles with multiple versions of ansible, python and various Linux flavors we can use

• molecule for our ansible role functionality
• docker as our abstraction layer on which we run the target system for our ansible role
• tox to setup generic virtualenvs and test our various combinations without side effects
• travis to automate it all

This will be quite a long/detailed answer. You can check out an example ansible role with the whole setup here

• https://github.com/ckaserer/ansible-role-example
• https://travis-ci.com/ckaserer/ansible-role-example

Molecule docs: https://molecule.readthedocs.io/en/stable/

I could create ansible images for every distro I would like to test as jeff geerling describes in his blog posts.

The clear downside of this approach: The images will need maintenance (eventually)

However, with molecule, we can combine base images with a Dockerfile.j2 (Jinja2 Template) to create the images with minimal requirements to run ansible. Through this approach, we are now able to use the official linux distro images from docker hub and do not need to maintain a docker repo for each linux distro and the various versions.

Here the important bits in molecule.yml

Here is an official explanation in the context of Roots' Trellis.

There were three solutions:

1. Upgrade Trellis.
2. Switch between Ansible versions (sudo pip install ansible==2.3.0.0 or with Homebrew brew search to see available versions and then brew install ansible@2.0 and brew link --force ansible@2.0) as you switch between projects.
3. Or follow these instructions to automatically switch between Ansible versions.