Netconf plugins are abstractions over the Netconf interface to network devices. They provide a standard interface for Ansible to execute tasks on those network devices.
These plugins generally correspond one-to-one to network device platforms. Ansible loads the appropriate netconf plugin automatically based on the ansible_network_os variable. If the platform supports standard Netconf implementation as defined in the Netconf RFC specification, Ansible loads the default netconf plugin. If the platform supports propriety Netconf RPCs, Ansible loads the platform-specific netconf plugin.
You can extend Ansible to support other network devices by dropping a custom plugin into the netconf_plugins directory.
The netconf plugin to use is determined automatically from the ansible_network_os variable. There should be no reason to override this functionality.
Most netconf plugins can operate without configuration. A few have additional options that can be set to affect how tasks are translated into netconf commands. A ncclient device specific handler name can be set in the netconf plugin or else the value of default is used as per ncclient device handler.
Plugins are self-documenting. Each plugin should document its configuration options.
These plugins have migrated to collections on Ansible Galaxy. If you installed Ansible version 2.10 or later using pip, you have access to several netconf plugins. To list all available netconf plugins on your control node, type ansible-doc -t netconf -l. To view plugin-specific documentation and examples, use ansible-doc -t netconf.
See also
An overview of using Ansible to automate networking devices.
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https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/plugins/netconf.html