# Collection Galaxy metadata structure

A key component of an Ansible collection is the `galaxy.yml` file placed in the root directory of a collection. This file contains the metadata of the collection that is used to generate a collection artifact.

## Structure

The `galaxy.yml` file must contain the following keys in valid YAML:

Key | Comment
--- | ---
namespace string / required | The namespace of the collection. This can be a company/brand/organization or product namespace under which all content lives. May only contain alphanumeric lowercase characters and underscores. Namespaces cannot start with underscores or numbers and cannot contain consecutive underscores.
name string / required | The name of the collection. Has the same character restrictions as `namespace`.
version string / required | The version of the collection. Must be compatible with semantic versioning.
readme string / required | The path to the Markdown (.md) readme file. This path is relative to the root of the collection.
authors list / required | A list of the collection’s content authors. Can be just the name or in the format ‘Full Name <email> (url) @nicks:irc/im.site#channel’.
description string | A short summary description of the collection.
license list | Either a single license or a list of licenses for content inside of a collection. Ansible Galaxy currently only accepts SPDX licenses This key is mutually exclusive with `license_file`.
license_file string | The path to the license file for the collection. This path is relative to the root of the collection. This key is mutually exclusive with `license`.
tags list | A list of tags you want to associate with the collection for indexing/searching. A tag name has the same character requirements as `namespace` and `name`.
dependencies dictionary | Collections that this collection requires to be installed for it to be usable. The key of the dict is the collection label `namespace.name`. The value is a version range specifiers. Multiple version range specifiers can be set and are separated by `,`.
repository string | The URL of the originating SCM repository.
documentation string | The URL to any online docs.
homepage string | The URL to the homepage of the collection/project.
issues string | The URL to the collection issue tracker.

## Examples

    namespace: "namespace_name"
    name: "collection_name"
    version: "1.0.12"
    readme: "README.md"
    authors:
        - "Author1"
        - "Author2 (https://author2.example.com)"
        - "Author3 <author3@example.com>"
    dependencies:
        "other_namespace.collection1": ">=1.0.0"
        "other_namespace.collection2": ">=2.0.0,<3.0.0"
        "anderson55.my_collection": "*"    # note: "*" selects the highest version available
    license:
        - "MIT"
    tags:
        - demo
        - collection
    repository: "https://www.github.com/my_org/my_collection"

See also

Developing collections

  Develop or modify a collection.

Ansible module development: getting started

  Learn about how to write Ansible modules

Using collections

  Learn how to install and use collections.

Mailing List

  The development mailing list

irc.freenode.net

  #ansible IRC chat channel