Quiz Entry - updated: 2026.10.22
What is the difference between ansible-core and the community ansible package?
ansible-core is the minimal runtime plus the ansible.builtin modules. The community ansible package is ansible-core plus a curated set of extra content collections with more modules and roles.
* ansible-core is the minimal runtime plus ansible.builtin; the community package wraps it with curated extra collections. *
| ansible-core | Community Ansible (ansible package) |
|
|---|---|---|
| Contents | Core runtime that interprets Ansible content, plus commonly used modules in the ansible.builtin collection |
ansible-core plus a selection of additional content collections chosen by the community |
| Size | Minimal | Much larger |
| Extra modules/roles | No | Yes (e.g. for clouds, network vendors) |
Both are published by the upstream developers as Python pip packages (pip install ansible-core / pip install ansible), and neither is supported by Red Hat. With ansible-core, the control node itself is the execution environment for the Ansible code.
Go deeper:
Releases and maintenance (official docs) — how the ansible package and ansible-core are versioned and released separately.
ansible on PyPI — the package page confirming it pulls in ansible-core plus a curated set of community collections.- Ansible.Builtin collection index (official docs) — everything that ships inside ansible-core.