After 4 months development, a design phase stretching back 10 years and more than 1,300 commits, I am pleased to finally announce the first stable series of Mitogen and the Mitogen for Ansible extension.

Mitogen is a Python zero-deploy distributed programming library designed to drastically increase the functional capability of infrastructure software operating via SSH. Mitogen for Ansible is a drop-in replacement for Ansible's lower tiers, netting huge speed and efficiency improvements for common playbooks.

What's There

This initial series covers a widely compatible drop-in Ansible extension on Python 2.6, 2.7, and 3.6, a preview of the first value-added functionality for Ansible (Connection Delegation), and a freeze of the underlying library required to support it.

With the exception of some gotchas listed in the release notes, you should expect the Ansible extension to just work, and if it doesn't please let me know via GitHub.

Demo

Refer to the posts under Just Tuning In? below for a 1000 foot view of the direction this work is heading, but for an idea of how things are today, watch the first minute of this recording, demonstrating a loop-heavy configuration of Mitogen's tests executing against the local machine.

Installation

To install Mitogen for Ansible, just follow the 5 easy steps in the documentation. For non-Ansible users the library is available from PyPI via pip install mitogen . Introductory documentation for the library is very weak right now, it will improve over the course of the stable series.

Thanks to all the supporters!

Mitogen development in 2018 was sponsored by a fabulous group of individuals and businesses through a crowdfunding campaign launched in February. Thanks to everyone who participated by pledging, testing, writing bug reports, and helping with upfront planning. A huge special thanks to the primary sponsor:

Founded in 1976, CGI is one of the world’s largest IT and business consulting services firms, helping clients achieve their goals, including becoming customer-centric digital organizations.

For career opportunities, please visit cgi-group.co.uk/defence-and-intelligence-opportunities. To directly apply to a UK team currently using Mitogen, contact us regarding Open Source Developer/DevOps opportunities.

What's next

Feature work will resume after most issues are ironed out of the stable series -- in particular I'm expecting more bugs around Python 3 and cross 2/3 interoperability. Once 0.2.x looks solid, one important goal is a complete and widely compatible Connection Delegation feature, including a rewrite of the fakessh component to support transparent use of the synchronize module.

Just tuning in?

Until next time!