Download Apache Commons Collections
Comprehension Collection (Grade 6), Whether being asked to read a newspaper article about an 'Ice Man,' a description of the different parts of a castle, or a letter written to Benjamin Franklin, the 30 illustrated activities included in this book provide. Smaller performance tasks following each reading within collections also provide opportunities to integrate knowledge and ideas from the texts they are reading. Below is an example of tasks from Grade 6, Collection 2: Informative essay: a one-page essay about a character from the story, 'The Mixer'.
Using a Mirror
We recommend you use a mirror to download our release builds, but you mustverify the integrity of the downloaded files using signatures downloaded from our main distribution directories. Recent releases (48 hours) may not yet be available from all the mirrors.
Collections 6 2 2 X 2
You are currently using https://ftp.halifax.rwth-aachen.de/apache/. If you encounter a problem with this mirror, please select another mirror. If all mirrors are failing, there are backup mirrors (at the end of the mirrors list) that should be available.
It is essential that you verify the integrity of downloaded files, preferably using the PGP signature (*.asc files); failing that using the SHA512 hash (*.sha512 checksum files).
Commons Collections. The Java Collections Framework was a major addition in JDK 1.2. It added many powerful data structures that accelerate development of most significant Java applications. Since that time it has become the recognised standard for collection handling in Java.
The KEYS file contains the public PGP keys used by Apache Commons developers to sign releases.
Apache Commons Collections 4.4 (Requires Java 8 or later)
Binaries
commons-collections4-4.4-bin.tar.gz | sha512 | pgp |
commons-collections4-4.4-bin.zip | sha512 | pgp |
Source
commons-collections4-4.4-src.tar.gz | sha512 | pgp |
commons-collections4-4.4-src.zip | sha512 | pgp |
Apache Commons Collections 4.2 (Requires Java 7 or later)
Binaries
commons-collections4-4.2-bin.tar.gz | sha512 | pgp |
commons-collections4-4.2-bin.zip | sha512 | pgp |
Source
commons-collections4-4.2-src.tar.gz | sha512 | pgp |
commons-collections4-4.2-src.zip | sha512 | pgp |
Apache Commons Collections 4.1 (Requires Java 6 or later)
Binaries
commons-collections4-4.1-bin.tar.gz | sha512 | pgp |
commons-collections4-4.1-bin.zip | sha512 | pgp |
Source
commons-collections4-4.1-src.tar.gz | sha512 | pgp |
commons-collections4-4.1-src.zip | sha512 | pgp |
Apache Commons Collections 3.2.2 (Requires Java 1.3 or later)
Binaries
commons-collections-3.2.2-bin.tar.gz | sha256 | pgp |
commons-collections-3.2.2-bin.zip | sha256 | pgp |
Source
commons-collections-3.2.2-src.tar.gz | sha256 | pgp |
commons-collections-3.2.2-src.zip | sha256 | pgp |
Archives
Older releases can be obtained from the archives.
Collections are a distribution format for Ansible content that can include playbooks, roles, modules, and plugins. As modules move from the core Ansible repository into collections, the module documentation will move to the collections pages.
You can install and use collections through Ansible Galaxy.
For details on how to develop collections see Developing collections.
For the current development status of Collections and FAQ see Ansible Collections Community Guide.
By default, ansible-galaxycollectioninstall
uses https://galaxy.ansible.com as the Galaxy server (as listed in theansible.cfg
file under GALAXY_SERVER). You do not need anyfurther configuration.
See Configuring the ansible-galaxy client if you are using any other Galaxy server, such as Red Hat Automation Hub.
To install a collection hosted in Galaxy:
You can also directly use the tarball from your build:
Note
2 6 2 Locomotives
The install command automatically appends the path ansible_collections
to the one specified with the -p
option unless theparent directory is already in a folder called ansible_collections
.
When using the -p
option to specify the install path, use one of the values configured in COLLECTIONS_PATHS, as this iswhere Ansible itself will expect to find collections. If you don't specify a path, ansible-galaxycollectioninstall
installsthe collection to the first path defined in COLLECTIONS_PATHS, which by default is ~/.ansible/collections
You can also keep a collection adjacent to the current playbook, under a collections/ansible_collections/
directory structure.
See Collection structure for details on the collection directory structure.
You can only have one version of a collection installed at a time. By default ansible-galaxy
installs the latest available version. If you want to install a specific version, you can add a version range identifier. For example, to install the 1.0.0-beta.1 version of the collection:
You can specify multiple range identifiers separated by ,
. Use single quotes so the shell passes the entire command, including >
, !
, and other operators, along. For example, to install the most recent version that is greater than or equal to 1.0.0 and less than 2.0.0:
Ansible will always install the most recent version that meets the range identifiers you specify. You can use the following range identifiers:
*
: The most recent version. This is the default.!=
: Not equal to the version specified.: Exactly the version specified.
>=
: Greater than or equal to the version specified.>
: Greater than the version specified.<=
: Less than or equal to the version specified.<
: Less than the version specified.
Note
By default ansible-galaxy
ignores pre-release versions. To install a pre-release version, you must use the range identifier to require it explicitly.
You can install a collection in a git repository by providing the URI to the repository instead of a collection name or path to a tar.gz
file. The collection must contain a galaxy.yml
file, which will be used to generate the would-be collection artifact data from the directory. The URI should be prefixed with git+
(or with git@
to use a private repository with ssh authentication) and optionally supports a comma-separated git commit-ish version (for example, a commit or tag).
Warning
Embedding credentials into a git URI is not secure. Make sure to use safe auth options for security reasons. Mac booster pro 8 0 28. For example, use SSH, netrc or http.extraHeader/url..pushInsteadOf in Git config to prevent your creds from being exposed in logs.
In a requirements.yml
file, you can also use the type
and version
keys in addition to using the git+repo,version
syntax for the collection name.
Git repositories can be used for collection dependencies as well. This can be helpful for local development and testing but built/published artifacts should only have dependencies on other artifacts.
There are two paths searched in a repository for collections by default.
The first is the galaxy.yml
file in the top level of the repository path. If the galaxy.yml
file exists it's used as the collection metadata and the individual collection will be installed.
The second is a galaxy.yml
file in each directory in the repository path (one level deep). In this scenario, each directory with a galaxy.yml
is installed as a collection.
If you have a different repository structure or only want to install a subset of collections, you can add a fragment to the end of your URI (before the optional comma-separated version) to indicate which path ansible-galaxy should inspect for galaxy.yml
file(s). The path should be a directory to a collection or multiple collections (rather than the path to a galaxy.yml
file).
You can also setup a requirements.yml
file to install multiple collections in one command. This file is a YAML file in the format:
The supported keys for collection requirement entries are name
, version
, source
, and type
.
The version
key can take in the same range identifier format documented above. If you're installing a collection from a git repository instead of a built collection artifact, the version
key refers to a git commit-ish.
The type
key can be set to galaxy
, url
, file
, and git
. If type
is omitted, the name
key is used to implicitly determine the source of the collection.
Roles can also be specified and placed under the roles
key. The values follow the same format as a requirementsfile used in older Ansible releases.
To install both roles and collections at the same time with one command, run the following:
Running ansible-galaxycollectioninstall-r
or ansible-galaxyroleinstall-r
will only install collections,or roles respectively.
Note
Installing both roles and collections from the same requirements file will not work when specifying a customcollection or role install path. In this scenario the collections will be skipped and the command will processeach like ansible-galaxyroleinstall
would.
To download the collection tarball from Galaxy for offline use:
Navigate to the collection page.
Click on Download tarball.
You may also need to manually download any dependent collections.
By default, ansible-galaxy
uses https://galaxy.ansible.com as the Galaxy server (as listed in the ansible.cfg
file under GALAXY_SERVER).
You can use either option below to configure ansible-galaxycollection
to use other servers (such as Red Hat Automation Hub or a custom Galaxy server):
Set the server list in the GALAXY_SERVER_LIST configuration option in The configuration file.
Use the
--server
command line argument to limit to an individual server.
To configure a Galaxy server list in ansible.cfg
:
Add the
server_list
option under the[galaxy]
section to one or more server names.Create a new section for each server name.
Set the
url
option for each server name.Optionally, set the API token for each server name. See API token for details.
Note
The url
option for each server name must end with a forward slash /
. If you do not set the API token in your Galaxy server list, use the --api-key
argument to pass in the token to the ansible-galaxycollectionpublish
command.
For Automation Hub, you additionally need to:
Set the
auth_url
option for each server name.Set the API token for each server name. Go to https://cloud.redhat.com/ansible/automation-hub/token/ and click :Get API token from the version dropdown to copy your API token.
The following example shows how to configure multiple servers:
Note
You can use the --server
command line argument to select an explicit Galaxy server in the server_list
andthe value of this argument should match the name of the server. To use a server not in the server list, set the value to the URL to access that server (all servers in the server list will be ignored). Also you cannot use the --api-key
argument for any of the predefined servers. You can only use the api_key
argument if you did not define a server list or if you specify a URL in the--server
argument.
Galaxy server list configuration options
The GALAXY_SERVER_LIST option is a list of server identifiers in a prioritized order. When searching for acollection, the install process will search in that order, for example, automation_hub
first, then my_org_hub
, release_galaxy
, andfinally test_galaxy
until the collection is found. The actual Galaxy instance is then defined under the section[galaxy_server.{{id}}]
where {{id}}
is the server identifier defined in the list. This section can thendefine the following keys:
url
: The URL of the Galaxy instance to connect to. Required.token
: An API token key to use for authentication against the Galaxy instance. Mutually exclusive withusername
.username
: The username to use for basic authentication against the Galaxy instance. Mutually exclusive withtoken
.password
: The password to use, in conjunction withusername
, for basic authentication.auth_url
: The URL of a Keycloak server ‘token_endpoint' if using SSO authentication (for example, Automation Hub). Mutually exclusive withusername
. Requirestoken
.
As well as defining these server options in the ansible.cfg
file, you can also define them as environment variables.The environment variable is in the form ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_{{id}}_{{key}}
where {{id}}
is the uppercase form of the server identifier and {{key}}
is the key to define. For example I can define token
forrelease_galaxy
by setting ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_RELEASE_GALAXY_TOKEN=secret_token
.
For operations that use only one Galaxy server (for example, the publish
, info
, or install
commands). the ansible-galaxycollection
command uses the first entry in theserver_list
, unless you pass in an explicit server with the --server
argument.
Note
Once a collection is found, any of its requirements are only searched within the same Galaxy instance as the parentcollection. The install process will not search for a collection requirement in a different Galaxy instance.
To download a collection and its dependencies for an offline install, run ansible-galaxycollectiondownload
. Thisdownloads the collections specified and their dependencies to the specified folder and creates a requirements.yml
file which can be used to install those collections on a host without access to a Galaxy server. All the collectionsare downloaded by default to the ./collections
folder.
Just like the install
command, the collections are sourced based on theconfigured galaxy server config. Even if a collection to download was specified by a URLor path to a tarball, the collection will be redownloaded from the configured Galaxy server.
Collections can be specified as one or multiple collections or with a requirements.yml
file just likeansible-galaxycollectioninstall
.
To download a single collection and its dependencies:
To download a single collection at a specific version:
To download multiple collections either specify multiple collections as command line arguments as shown above or use arequirements file in the format documented with Install multiple collections with a requirements file.
All the collections are downloaded by default to the ./collections
folder but you can use -p
or--download-path
to specify another path:
Once you have downloaded the collections, the folder contains the collections specified, their dependencies, and arequirements.yml
file. You can use this folder as is with ansible-galaxycollectioninstall
to install thecollections on a host without access to a Galaxy or Automation Hub server.
To list installed collections, run ansible-galaxycollectionlist
. This shows all of the installed collections found in the configured collections search paths. It will also show collections under development which contain a galaxy.yml file instead of a MANIFEST.json. The path where the collections are located are displayed as well as version information. If no version information is available, a *
is displayed for the version number.
Run with -vvv
to display more detailed information.
To list a specific collection, pass a valid fully qualified collection name (FQCN) to the command ansible-galaxycollectionlist
. All instances of the collection will be listed.
To search other paths for collections, use the -p
option. Specify multiple search paths by separating them with a :
. The list of paths specified on the command line will be added to the beginning of the configured collections search paths.
Once installed, you can verify that the content of the installed collection matches the content of the collection on the server. This feature expects that the collection is installed in one of the configured collection paths and that the collection exists on one of the configured galaxy servers.
The output of the ansible-galaxycollectionverify
command is quiet if it is successful. If a collection has been modified, the altered files are listed under the collection name.
You can use the -vvv
flag to display additional information, such as the version and path of the installed collection, the URL of the remote collection used for validation, and successful verification output.
If you have a pre-release or non-latest version of a collection installed you should include the specific version to verify. If the version is omitted, the installed collection is verified against the latest version available on the server.
In addition to the namespace.collection_name:version
format, you can provide the collections to verify in a requirements.yml
file. Dependencies listed in requirements.yml
are not included in the verify process and should be verified separately.
Verifying against tar.gz
files is not supported. If your requirements.yml
contains paths to tar files or URLs for installation, you can use the --ignore-errors
flag to ensure that all collections using the namespace.name
format in the file are processed.
Once installed, you can reference a collection content by its fully qualified collection name (FQCN):
Older releases can be obtained from the archives.
Collections are a distribution format for Ansible content that can include playbooks, roles, modules, and plugins. As modules move from the core Ansible repository into collections, the module documentation will move to the collections pages.
You can install and use collections through Ansible Galaxy.
For details on how to develop collections see Developing collections.
For the current development status of Collections and FAQ see Ansible Collections Community Guide.
By default, ansible-galaxycollectioninstall
uses https://galaxy.ansible.com as the Galaxy server (as listed in theansible.cfg
file under GALAXY_SERVER). You do not need anyfurther configuration.
See Configuring the ansible-galaxy client if you are using any other Galaxy server, such as Red Hat Automation Hub.
To install a collection hosted in Galaxy:
You can also directly use the tarball from your build:
Note
2 6 2 Locomotives
The install command automatically appends the path ansible_collections
to the one specified with the -p
option unless theparent directory is already in a folder called ansible_collections
.
When using the -p
option to specify the install path, use one of the values configured in COLLECTIONS_PATHS, as this iswhere Ansible itself will expect to find collections. If you don't specify a path, ansible-galaxycollectioninstall
installsthe collection to the first path defined in COLLECTIONS_PATHS, which by default is ~/.ansible/collections
You can also keep a collection adjacent to the current playbook, under a collections/ansible_collections/
directory structure.
See Collection structure for details on the collection directory structure.
You can only have one version of a collection installed at a time. By default ansible-galaxy
installs the latest available version. If you want to install a specific version, you can add a version range identifier. For example, to install the 1.0.0-beta.1 version of the collection:
You can specify multiple range identifiers separated by ,
. Use single quotes so the shell passes the entire command, including >
, !
, and other operators, along. For example, to install the most recent version that is greater than or equal to 1.0.0 and less than 2.0.0:
Ansible will always install the most recent version that meets the range identifiers you specify. You can use the following range identifiers:
*
: The most recent version. This is the default.!=
: Not equal to the version specified.: Exactly the version specified.
>=
: Greater than or equal to the version specified.>
: Greater than the version specified.<=
: Less than or equal to the version specified.<
: Less than the version specified.
Note
By default ansible-galaxy
ignores pre-release versions. To install a pre-release version, you must use the range identifier to require it explicitly.
You can install a collection in a git repository by providing the URI to the repository instead of a collection name or path to a tar.gz
file. The collection must contain a galaxy.yml
file, which will be used to generate the would-be collection artifact data from the directory. The URI should be prefixed with git+
(or with git@
to use a private repository with ssh authentication) and optionally supports a comma-separated git commit-ish version (for example, a commit or tag).
Warning
Embedding credentials into a git URI is not secure. Make sure to use safe auth options for security reasons. Mac booster pro 8 0 28. For example, use SSH, netrc or http.extraHeader/url..pushInsteadOf in Git config to prevent your creds from being exposed in logs.
In a requirements.yml
file, you can also use the type
and version
keys in addition to using the git+repo,version
syntax for the collection name.
Git repositories can be used for collection dependencies as well. This can be helpful for local development and testing but built/published artifacts should only have dependencies on other artifacts.
There are two paths searched in a repository for collections by default.
The first is the galaxy.yml
file in the top level of the repository path. If the galaxy.yml
file exists it's used as the collection metadata and the individual collection will be installed.
The second is a galaxy.yml
file in each directory in the repository path (one level deep). In this scenario, each directory with a galaxy.yml
is installed as a collection.
If you have a different repository structure or only want to install a subset of collections, you can add a fragment to the end of your URI (before the optional comma-separated version) to indicate which path ansible-galaxy should inspect for galaxy.yml
file(s). The path should be a directory to a collection or multiple collections (rather than the path to a galaxy.yml
file).
You can also setup a requirements.yml
file to install multiple collections in one command. This file is a YAML file in the format:
The supported keys for collection requirement entries are name
, version
, source
, and type
.
The version
key can take in the same range identifier format documented above. If you're installing a collection from a git repository instead of a built collection artifact, the version
key refers to a git commit-ish.
The type
key can be set to galaxy
, url
, file
, and git
. If type
is omitted, the name
key is used to implicitly determine the source of the collection.
Roles can also be specified and placed under the roles
key. The values follow the same format as a requirementsfile used in older Ansible releases.
To install both roles and collections at the same time with one command, run the following:
Running ansible-galaxycollectioninstall-r
or ansible-galaxyroleinstall-r
will only install collections,or roles respectively.
Note
Installing both roles and collections from the same requirements file will not work when specifying a customcollection or role install path. In this scenario the collections will be skipped and the command will processeach like ansible-galaxyroleinstall
would.
To download the collection tarball from Galaxy for offline use:
Navigate to the collection page.
Click on Download tarball.
You may also need to manually download any dependent collections.
By default, ansible-galaxy
uses https://galaxy.ansible.com as the Galaxy server (as listed in the ansible.cfg
file under GALAXY_SERVER).
You can use either option below to configure ansible-galaxycollection
to use other servers (such as Red Hat Automation Hub or a custom Galaxy server):
Set the server list in the GALAXY_SERVER_LIST configuration option in The configuration file.
Use the
--server
command line argument to limit to an individual server.
To configure a Galaxy server list in ansible.cfg
:
Add the
server_list
option under the[galaxy]
section to one or more server names.Create a new section for each server name.
Set the
url
option for each server name.Optionally, set the API token for each server name. See API token for details.
Note
The url
option for each server name must end with a forward slash /
. If you do not set the API token in your Galaxy server list, use the --api-key
argument to pass in the token to the ansible-galaxycollectionpublish
command.
For Automation Hub, you additionally need to:
Set the
auth_url
option for each server name.Set the API token for each server name. Go to https://cloud.redhat.com/ansible/automation-hub/token/ and click :Get API token from the version dropdown to copy your API token.
The following example shows how to configure multiple servers:
Note
You can use the --server
command line argument to select an explicit Galaxy server in the server_list
andthe value of this argument should match the name of the server. To use a server not in the server list, set the value to the URL to access that server (all servers in the server list will be ignored). Also you cannot use the --api-key
argument for any of the predefined servers. You can only use the api_key
argument if you did not define a server list or if you specify a URL in the--server
argument.
Galaxy server list configuration options
The GALAXY_SERVER_LIST option is a list of server identifiers in a prioritized order. When searching for acollection, the install process will search in that order, for example, automation_hub
first, then my_org_hub
, release_galaxy
, andfinally test_galaxy
until the collection is found. The actual Galaxy instance is then defined under the section[galaxy_server.{{id}}]
where {{id}}
is the server identifier defined in the list. This section can thendefine the following keys:
url
: The URL of the Galaxy instance to connect to. Required.token
: An API token key to use for authentication against the Galaxy instance. Mutually exclusive withusername
.username
: The username to use for basic authentication against the Galaxy instance. Mutually exclusive withtoken
.password
: The password to use, in conjunction withusername
, for basic authentication.auth_url
: The URL of a Keycloak server ‘token_endpoint' if using SSO authentication (for example, Automation Hub). Mutually exclusive withusername
. Requirestoken
.
As well as defining these server options in the ansible.cfg
file, you can also define them as environment variables.The environment variable is in the form ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_{{id}}_{{key}}
where {{id}}
is the uppercase form of the server identifier and {{key}}
is the key to define. For example I can define token
forrelease_galaxy
by setting ANSIBLE_GALAXY_SERVER_RELEASE_GALAXY_TOKEN=secret_token
.
For operations that use only one Galaxy server (for example, the publish
, info
, or install
commands). the ansible-galaxycollection
command uses the first entry in theserver_list
, unless you pass in an explicit server with the --server
argument.
Note
Once a collection is found, any of its requirements are only searched within the same Galaxy instance as the parentcollection. The install process will not search for a collection requirement in a different Galaxy instance.
To download a collection and its dependencies for an offline install, run ansible-galaxycollectiondownload
. Thisdownloads the collections specified and their dependencies to the specified folder and creates a requirements.yml
file which can be used to install those collections on a host without access to a Galaxy server. All the collectionsare downloaded by default to the ./collections
folder.
Just like the install
command, the collections are sourced based on theconfigured galaxy server config. Even if a collection to download was specified by a URLor path to a tarball, the collection will be redownloaded from the configured Galaxy server.
Collections can be specified as one or multiple collections or with a requirements.yml
file just likeansible-galaxycollectioninstall
.
To download a single collection and its dependencies:
To download a single collection at a specific version:
To download multiple collections either specify multiple collections as command line arguments as shown above or use arequirements file in the format documented with Install multiple collections with a requirements file.
All the collections are downloaded by default to the ./collections
folder but you can use -p
or--download-path
to specify another path:
Once you have downloaded the collections, the folder contains the collections specified, their dependencies, and arequirements.yml
file. You can use this folder as is with ansible-galaxycollectioninstall
to install thecollections on a host without access to a Galaxy or Automation Hub server.
To list installed collections, run ansible-galaxycollectionlist
. This shows all of the installed collections found in the configured collections search paths. It will also show collections under development which contain a galaxy.yml file instead of a MANIFEST.json. The path where the collections are located are displayed as well as version information. If no version information is available, a *
is displayed for the version number.
Run with -vvv
to display more detailed information.
To list a specific collection, pass a valid fully qualified collection name (FQCN) to the command ansible-galaxycollectionlist
. All instances of the collection will be listed.
To search other paths for collections, use the -p
option. Specify multiple search paths by separating them with a :
. The list of paths specified on the command line will be added to the beginning of the configured collections search paths.
Once installed, you can verify that the content of the installed collection matches the content of the collection on the server. This feature expects that the collection is installed in one of the configured collection paths and that the collection exists on one of the configured galaxy servers.
The output of the ansible-galaxycollectionverify
command is quiet if it is successful. If a collection has been modified, the altered files are listed under the collection name.
You can use the -vvv
flag to display additional information, such as the version and path of the installed collection, the URL of the remote collection used for validation, and successful verification output.
If you have a pre-release or non-latest version of a collection installed you should include the specific version to verify. If the version is omitted, the installed collection is verified against the latest version available on the server.
In addition to the namespace.collection_name:version
format, you can provide the collections to verify in a requirements.yml
file. Dependencies listed in requirements.yml
are not included in the verify process and should be verified separately.
Verifying against tar.gz
files is not supported. If your requirements.yml
contains paths to tar files or URLs for installation, you can use the --ignore-errors
flag to ensure that all collections using the namespace.name
format in the file are processed.
Once installed, you can reference a collection content by its fully qualified collection name (FQCN):
This works for roles or any type of plugin distributed within the collection:
The collections
keyword lets you define a list of collections that your role or playbook should search for unqualified module and action names. So you can use the collections
keyword, then simply refer to modules and action plugins by their short-form names throughout that role or playbook.
Warning
If your playbook uses both the collections
keyword and one or more roles, the roles do not inherit the collections set by the playbook. See below for details.
Within a role, you can control which collections Ansible searches for the tasks inside the role using the collections
keyword in the role's meta/main.yml
. Ansible will use the collections list defined inside the role even if the playbook that calls the role defines different collections in a separate collections
keyword entry. Roles defined inside a collection always implicitly search their own collection first, so you don't need to use the collections
keyword to access modules, actions, or other roles contained in the same collection.
In a playbook, you can control the collections Ansible searches for modules and action plugins to execute. However, any roles you call in your playbook define their own collections search order; they do not inherit the calling playbook's settings. This is true even if the role does not define its own collections
keyword.
The collections
keyword merely creates an ordered ‘search path' for non-namespaced plugin and role references. It does not install content or otherwise change Ansible's behavior around the loading of plugins or roles. Note that an FQCN is still required for non-action or module plugins (for example, lookups, filters, tests).
See also
Develop or modify a collection.
Understand the collections metadata structure.
The development mailing list
#ansible IRC chat channel