molecule-multipass

What it is and what it does

molecule-multipass is a driver plugin for Molecule, the Ansible role testing framework. It allows you to provision and test Ansible roles using Multipass—a lightweight tool that spins up Ubuntu virtual machines on demand on your local workstation. Instead of using Docker, libvirt, or cloud providers, you define your test scenarios in a molecule.yml file, specify molecule_multipass as the driver, and Molecule will orchestrate VM creation, Ansible provisioning, and test verification using Multipass as the underlying hypervisor.

The plugin is designed for developers who want to test Ansible roles in full VM environments locally without cloud infrastructure. It depends only on the molecule package itself, making installation straightforward. However, the package has been abandoned since May 2023 with no active maintenance, so compatibility with newer versions of Molecule or Multipass is uncertain.

Use it for:

• Test Ansible roles in isolated Ubuntu VMs on your laptop without Docker or cloud resources.
• Verify role behavior across different Multipass VM configurations before deploying to production.
• Develop and iterate on Ansible playbooks using Molecule's standard testing workflow with local VMs.
• Run Molecule test scenarios in CI/CD pipelines where Multipass VMs are available as the test environment.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Integrates Multipass virtual machines as a provider for Molecule, enabling testing of Ansible roles and playbooks using Ubuntu VMs on local workstations.

Yes, if you need Multipass-based Ansible testing and are comfortable with an abandoned package. The low install friction and permissive license make it easy to adopt, and it has no known vulnerabilities. However, verify that it works with your current Molecule and Multipass versions before relying on it in production workflows, and consider maintaining a fork if you encounter incompatibilities.

Install

molecule-multipass on PyPI

pip install molecule-multipass

uv add molecule-multipass

poetry add molecule-multipass

Installing molecule-multipass

Before you install

Low install friction with a single runtime dependency (molecule). However, the package is abandoned—last release was 2023-05-24 with no commits or maintenance activity since. Use only if you are comfortable maintaining a fork or accepting that bug fixes and compatibility updates will not arrive.

License in practice

Licensed under MIT (permissive), so you can use, modify, and distribute the package freely with minimal restrictions.

Quickstart

pip install molecule-multipass

# Then create a test scenario:
molecule init scenario test_scenario -d molecule_multipass

# Configure molecule.yml with:
# driver:
#   name: molecule_multipass
# platforms:
#   - name: instance

Multipass must be installed separately on your system (e.g., 'brew install --cask multipass' on macOS) before the plugin can provision VMs.

Verify before relying

• Whether this plugin remains compatible with current versions of Molecule and Multipass given the lack of maintenance since May 2023.
• Whether Multipass must be installed separately on your system before the plugin can function (the description mentions 'brew install --cask multipass' but does not clarify if it is a hard requirement or optional).

Package facts

Evidence: molecule_multipass-0.5.0-py3-none-any.whl

Tags

More Testing packages