[Feature]: Specific Ansible, Python and collection version #420
Description
Describe the feature request
We should stick to a specific, compatible set of versions for Ansible and Python:
https://docs.ansible.com/projects/ansible/devel/reference_appendices/release_and_maintenance.html#ansible-core-support-matrix
This is not only about the support matrix itself, but also about preventing task failures. In addition, community collections support only certain Ansible versions.
At the moment, we are using Python 3.8, and the runner installs ansible-core~=2.13.7 via the requirements-test.txt file. However, we install the community.general collection with the latest version from requirements.yml in every pipeline. The current latest release requires Ansible ≥ 2.17.0, which leads to failures in tasks that depend on this collection.
We should therefore pin the version of each collection explicitly. In future feature updates, we can then upgrade Ansible, Python, and the collections together in a coordinated way. It would also be helpful to document the supported versions of all three components: Ansible, Python, and the collections. The pining of python version should be in the prepare.yml also on the container site. Also we need to pin the python in the workflow on the runner