Problem

The bindep.txt (we renamed it from binddep.txt) file in the vmware-migration-kit collection includes epel-release as a dependency. This causes Ansible Execution Environment builds to fail when using RHEL9-based images such as registry.redhat.io/ansible-automation-platform-25/ee-minimal-rhel9:latest.

Error Message

ansible-builder build --no-cache --tag rhospvmt-ee:latest -v 3

error: No package matches 'epel-release'
Error: building at STEP "RUN /output/scripts/assemble": while running runtime: exit status 1

Technical Details: Ansible Builder Introspection Phase

When ansible-builder builds an Execution Environment, it performs an introspection phase that automatically discovers and merges dependencies from all collections specified in requirements.yml.

Build Process

1. Galaxy Stage: Downloads collections from Automation Hub/Galaxy to /usr/share/ansible/collections
2. Builder Stage: Runs introspect.py which:

• Scans each collection for bindep.txt, requirements.txt, and meta/ee-requirements.txt
• Merges user-provided dependencies with collection dependencies
• Writes merged files to /tmp/src/bindep.txt and /tmp/src/requirements.txt
  3. Assemble Stage: Runs /output/scripts/assemble which:
• Parses merged bindep.txt using bindep tool
• Installs all packages via microdnf

Containerfile Snippet (generated by ansible-builder)

# Builder stage
RUN $PYCMD /output/scripts/introspect.py introspect \
    --sanitize \
    --user-pip=requirements.txt \
    --user-bindep=bindep.txt \
    --write-bindep=/tmp/src/bindep.txt \
    --write-pip=/tmp/src/requirements.txt
RUN /output/scripts/assemble

Root Cause

The ee-minimal-rhel9 base image does not have EPEL repositories configured, and epel-release is not available in standard RHEL repositories.

Impact

This issue blocks users from building Ansible Execution Environments with the os_migrate.vmware_migration_kit collection using standard AAP base images.

Workaround

Users can work around this by adding EPEL installation in additional_build_steps.prepend_base in their execution-environment.yml:

additional_build_steps:   prepend_base:     - "RUN curl -sLo /tmp/epel-release.rpm https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-9.noarch.rpm && rpm -ivh /tmp/epel-release.rpm && rm -f /tmp/epel-release.rpm"

However, this workaround should not be necessary.