In this respect, Ansible is awesome. For a Linux package installation, all you need is Python 2 (version 2.6 or higher) or Python 3 (version 3.5 or higher). For source installation, we may need the development suite, such as the build-essential package for the Debian family, or the Development Tools group package for the Red Hat family.
Most package managers of Linux operating systems will automatically download the appropriate Python version and its dependencies when asked to install Ansible.
As for Mac OS X, having Homebrew and Xcode installed should do the job. Bear in mind that these are a requirement needed to install the Ansible package.
Before using Ansible Mac OS X, you need to run a command as a root user to allow yourself to control more than 15 hosts. This has something to do with the limit of files to be handled simultaneously. The command is sudo launchctl limit maxfiles unlimited.
With regard to the Ansible container installation, we need a container engine. In our case, we will be using Docker, or any equivalent platform, such as Singularity or Shifter. For the cloud installation, all we need is an SSH client to connect to the AWS instance. Other cloud providers, such as Google Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure, also support Ansible instances.
You can always create your own customized cloud instance on any platform. Our recommendations are for the vast majority of use cases where we believe that the AWS-supported and community instances are tested by many users, and they are as stable and reliable as they can be.
Other requirements are not mentioned here because they are not strictly essential for the Ansible main functions and modules, but instead for very specific plugins and modules. We will cover these when we talk about those modules and plugins.
