The ansible-galaxy install command can be used to:

• Install a role
• Install a collection

In this example, the ansible.posix collection is installed. Notice that by default, the collection is installed to the users collections (/home/john.doe/.ansible/collections).

~]$ ansible-galaxy collection install ansible.posix
Starting galaxy collection install process
Process install dependency map
Starting collection install process
Installing 'ansible.posix:1.2.0' to '/home/john.doe/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ansible/posix'
Downloading https://galaxy.ansible.com/download/ansible-posix-1.2.0.tar.gz to /home/john.doe/.ansible/tmp/ansible-local-15258q2alfwvq/tmpdesamf4k
ansible.posix (1.2.0) was installed successfully

The -p or --collections-path option can be used to specify the installation directory. In this example, the ansible.posix collection will be installed to /usr/local/ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ansible/posix.

ansible-galaxy collection install ansible.posix --collections-path /usr/local/ansible/collections

In this scenario, it probably makes the most sense to append /usr/local/ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ansible/posix to the library directory in the main ansible.cfg file so that any user on the system can use a package in the ansible.posix collection.

library = /usr/local/ansible/collections/ansible_collections/ansible/posix

The requirements.yml file can be used to install one or more collections. For example, let's say requirements.yml has the following.

---
collections:
  - ansible.posix
  - community.general

You would then issue this command to install the collections listed in requirements.yml.

ansible-galaxy install -r requirements.yml