This is a clone of issue OCPBUGS-43759. The following is the description of the original issue:
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Description of problem:

In the past, the downstream ansible operator SDK image had an easy way via "ansible-operator version" command to provide the version of the upstream project the downstream image is based on. This was true up until 4.16 but no longer true for 4.17.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

4.17

How reproducible:

Simply run the image and execute the command "ansible-operator version" and look at the version info that is output.

Steps to Reproduce:

In the 4.17 container, run the "ansible-operator version" command and notice the version now says "4.17...." ; we no longer know what the upstream version is from which downstream was built:

podman run  -it --rm --entrypoint '' registry.redhat.io/openshift4/ose-ansible-rhel9-operator:v4.17 ansible-operator version

prints this output (look at the "ansible-operator version" string):

ansible-operator version: "v4.17.0-202410112132.p0.g1d4d62e.assembly.stream.el9-dirty", commit: "35be4e4bd5eabea804df9c5335a3f103cabf7abf", kubernetes version: "v1.29.0", go version: "go1.22.7 (Red Hat 1.22.7-1.el9_5) X:strictfipsruntime", GOOS: "linux", GOARCH: "amd64"

To compare what the old, correct behavior was, do the same with the previous 4.16 image:

podman run  -it --rm --entrypoint '' registry.redhat.io/openshift4/ose-ansible-operator:v4.16 ansible-operator version

This outputs:

ansible-operator version: "v1.31.0-ocp", commit: "98f1419d838272bba08202ebc8e5e6c3ffe95f1f", kubernetes version: "v1.26.0", go version: "go1.21.9 (Red Hat 1.21.9-1.module+el8.10.0+21671+b35c3b78) X:strictfipsruntime", GOOS: "linux", GOARCH: "amd64"

Notice here "ansible-operator version" is reported as "v1.31.0-ocp" which tells us this downstream image was produced from the v1.31 upstream codebase.  This information is what is missing in 4.17.