Running Ansible with the community EE image

You can run ansible without the need to build a custom EE using community images.

Use the community-ee-minimal image that includes only ansible-core or the community-ee-base image that also includes several base collections. Run the following command to see the collections included in the community-ee-base image:

ansible-navigator collections --execution-environment-image ghcr.io/ansible-community/community-ee-base:latest

Run the following Ansible ad-hoc command against localhost inside the community-ee-minimal container:

ansible-navigator exec "ansible localhost -m setup" --execution-environment-image ghcr.io/ansible-community/community-ee-minimal:latest --mode stdout

Now, create a simple test playbook and run it against localhost inside the container:

- name: Gather and print local facts
  hosts: localhost
  gather_facts: true
  tasks:

   - name: Print facts
     ansible.builtin.debug:
      var: ansible_facts

ansible-navigator run test_localhost.yml --execution-environment-image ghcr.io/ansible-community/community-ee-minimal:latest --mode stdout