cisco.dnac was renamed to cisco.catalystcenter that is not included in the `ansible` community package

[gotmax23]

Hi 👋 from the Ansible community package release managers,

We noticed that this collection has been deprecated in favor of cisco.catalystcenter (see #324). This creates some friction, since cisco.catalystcenter has not been included in the ansible package, and it does not appear to be backwards compatible with cisco.dnac

Ideally, we could follow the standard renaming process if it’s feasible to restore backward compatibility in the new collection. This path would create the smoothest experience for end users of the ansible package.

If that isn’t practical, we can apply the removal process for deprecated collections and remove cisco.dnac in Ansible 14. In that case, cisco.catalystcenter would be considered a new collection. It would need to go through the Ansible inclusion review process to be added to the package.

Please let us know how you want to move forward or if you have any questions. Thank you!

[oraNod]

I've reached out to the team that maintains this collection and suggested that they follow the renaming guidelines that you've pointed out. I've also done a comparison of the two collections, assisted by Claude Code v2.1.84, in an attempt to be helpful. I wanted to share that information here for transparency.

1. cisco.catalystcenter needs backwards-compatible aliases for all renamed options (dnac_host, dnac_username, dnac_password, dnac_port, dnac_verify, dnac_version, dnac_debug, dnac_log, dnac_log_level) in the argument spec, plus the dnac_response return key, and the user alias on the username param. There are also 30 missing *_playbook_config_generator modules that have not been carried over.

2. cisco.dnac needs a redirect-only release (e.g., 7.0.0) where all module code is removed and replaced with plugin_routing redirects in meta/runtime.yml pointing every module, action plugin, doc_fragment, and module_util to cisco.catalystcenter. This release should declare a dependency on cisco.catalystcenter.

3. There seems to be a port parameter inconsistency in catalystcenter (catalystcenter_api_port in the argspec vs catalystcenter_port in the internal code). This appears to be a bug and that should be fixed.

While I did use an AI assistant with the comparison, I have downloaded both collections from Galaxy and manually verified the findings. There might be other items that need to be addressed but I expect that the development team would know those details better than I would.

[obrigg]

Thanks, Don.
Cisco DNA Center was rebranded as Cisco Catalyst Center several years ago. The cisco.catalystcenter collection will not be 100% backwards-compatible due to the naming changes.
We would like to introduce cisco.catalystcenter to the community package. Once approved - we will ask to remove the cisco.dnac collection.

[mariolenz]

@obrigg I don't have a problem with adding cisco.catalystcenter to the Ansible Community Package. But personally, I think we should deprecate and remove cisco.dnac ASAP.

I don't think it's a good idea to wait until cisco.catalystcenter has been added. At the end of the day, you've deprecated cisco.dnac. And I don't like to see officially deprecated collections in ACP.

BTW since you've deprecated cisco.dnac I suggest to archive this repo.