Ansible: Installation Methods

Install Ansible with System Package Manager

A list of distro repos and the versions they ship is available on Repology.

Red Hat Family

If on a supported version on Red Hat Enterprise Linux or a "bug-for-bug compatible" distro like CentOS, Rocky Linux, or AlmaLinux, you should first enable EPEL. On Fedora systems, skip this step.

# For CentOS/RHEL 7, etc.
sudo yum install epel-release
# For Rocky Linux/AlmaLinux/RHEL 8 and newer, etc.
sudo dnf install epel-release

After doing that, you can install the ansible package.

# For CentOS/RHEL 7, etc.
sudo yum install ansible
# For Fedora, CentOS Stream, Rocky Linux/AlmaLinux/RHEL 8 and newer, etc.
sudo dnf install ansible

Debian Family

The simplest way to do this would be the following:

sudo apt install ansible

In my personal experience, that should be fine in most cases, but it does install an older version of ansible. There are a few options if you need the latest version - you can install from a PPA (recommended for Ubuntu-based distros), install with pip, install with pipx, or install with spipx.

Install from PPA

The instructions from the Ansible docs say to install from the PPA on Ubuntu-based systems.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository --yes --update ppa:ansible/ansible
sudo apt install ansible

The Ansible docs include instructions for using the PPA on Debian as well, but I'd highly recommend against that approach, because it uses the deprecated apt-key command, and it is considered bad practice to use PPAs on Debian - see Advice For New Users On Not Breaking Their Debian System § Don't make a FrankenDebian on the Debian wiki for an explanation.

pip

Assuming you have Python (version 3.9-3.11) with pip installed, the simplest way to install is as follows:

python3 -m pip install --user ansible

pipx

pipx is a tool that, much like pip, can install programs from the Python Package Index, but unlike pip, it installs them into their own isolated venv, to avoid polluting the system Python prefix and avoid dependency hell.

pipx install ansible --include-deps

Note: without the --include-deps flag, it would still install ansible and its dependencies to the venv, but would only add ansible-core to your PATH, not the full suite of commands.

Installing pipx can be done a few different ways:

Install pipx with System Package Manager

pipx is available for most modern distros, but might need some extra work to get it up and running.

On RHEL 9 and its bug-for-bug compatible derivatives, it's available through EPEL. On versions 8 and oolder, it is not available.

On Debian Bullsey (stable at time of writing), it is available through the backports repository. See Debian Backports » Instructions if you need instructions to enable it.

Install pipx with pip

python3 -m pip install --user pipx

I'd recommend against this method, as installing as user is a recipe for dependency hell, while installing as root is a recipe for dependency hell that can break your system. See the pipx-in-pipx instructions below for an alternative.

Install pipx with pipx-in-pipx

pipx-in-pipx is a tool that bootstraps pipx, by installing it into an isolated venv that pipx will then manage - so you'll have a self-managing pipx installation. When installing a package, pip runs its setup.py script. The pipx-in-pipx setup.py script simply runs through the bootstrapping process I described, then uninstalls itself, leaving no other traces on the system. It is hacky, but results in a cleaner python setup, and helps prevent your laptop from becoming a superfund site - see xkcd #1987.

python3 -m pip install --user pipx-in-pipx

spipx

This is a script of my own creation, which builds on pipx. Normally, pipx will install things to ~/.local/pipx, and add symlinks to the executables it manages in ~/.local/bin. Those paths can be overridden with the PIPX_HOME and PIPX_BIN_DIR environment variables, respectively.

I figured that if multiple users would be using pipx, it might be better to set pipx to install things to a directory shared across users. The way I do that is with the following:

sudo dd of=/usr/local/sbin/spipx <<EOF
#!/bin/sh

if [ "\$(id -u)" -ne 0 ]; then
    printf 'Error: spipx must be run as root!\n'
fi

PIPX_HOME=/opt/pipx PIPX_BIN=/opt/pipx/bin pipx "\$@"
EOF
sudo chmod +x /usr/local/sbin/spipx

Additionally, the PATH variable must include the /opt/pipx/bin directory. One way to make sure that that is the case is to run the following:

sudo dd of=/etc/profile.d/spipx_path.local.sh <<EOF
PATH="\$PATH\${PATH+:}/opt/pipx/bin"
EOF
. /etc/profile.d/spipx_path.local.sh

Finally, run the command

sudo spipx install ansible --include-deps