Description of Problem

The openshift-pipelines-operator-rh operator exhibits two critical issues in its olm.skipRange configuration:

1. Missing Patch Coverage (OCP <=4.18): The current catalog fails to include the 1.15.4 skipRange version in the pipelines-1.15 channel.

1. Catalog Regression (OCP >=4.19): There is a consistent regression across all newer OCP versions (4.19 and higher) where the olm.skipRange for several legacy channels has reverted to older, less inclusive values than those found in the OCP 4.18 catalog. This mirrors historical issues where upgrade paths were lost due to missing skip ranges.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Extract the skipRange metadata on an OCP 4.17 cluster:

   $ oc version
   Client Version: 4.17.6
   Kustomize Version: v5.0.4-0.20230601165947-6ce0bf390ce3
   Server Version: 4.17.47
   Kubernetes Version: v1.30.14
   
   $ oc get tektonconfig
   NAME     VERSION   READY   REASON
   config   1.15.4    True    
   
   $ oc get packagemanifests openshift-pipelines-operator-rh -n openshift-marketplace -o json | jq -r '.status.channels[] | "\(.name): \(.currentCSVDesc.annotations["olm.skipRange"])"'
   latest: >=1.20.0 <1.21.0
   pipelines-1.14: >=1.13.0 <1.14.6
   pipelines-1.15: >=1.14.0 <1.15.3
   pipelines-1.16: >=1.15.0 <1.16.4
   pipelines-1.17: >=1.16.0 <1.17.2
   pipelines-1.18: >=1.17.0 <1.18.1
   pipelines-1.19: >=1.18.0 <1.19.4
   pipelines-1.20: >=1.19.0 <1.20.2
   pipelines-1.21: >=1.20.0 <1.21.0
   

    

1. Observe that the pipelines-1.15 channel stops at <1.15.3.

1. Run the same command on any cluster with OCP >= 4.19 and compare the legacy channel ranges (1.14 through 1.17).

   latest: >=1.20.0 <1.21.0
   pipelines-1.14: >=1.13.0 <1.14.5
   pipelines-1.15: >=1.14.0 <1.15.2
   pipelines-1.16: >=1.16.0 <1.16.3
   pipelines-1.17: >=1.17.0 <1.17.1
   pipelines-1.18: >=1.17.0 <1.18.1
   pipelines-1.19: >=1.18.0 <1.19.4
   pipelines-1.20: >=1.19.0 <1.20.2
   pipelines-1.21: >=1.20.0 <1.21.0

Actual Results

OCP 4.18 (Missing 1.15.4)

• Channel pipelines-1.15: olm.skipRange: >=1.14.0 <1.15.3.

• Impact: Build 1.15.4 is not covered, breaking the upgrade path for users on this version.

OCP >= 4.19 (Metadata Regression)

Across all OCP versions 4.19 and above, the metadata is regressed compared to 4.18:

• Channel pipelines-1.14: Regressed to <1.14.5 (OCP 4.18 has <1.14.6).

• Channel pipelines-1.15: Regressed to <1.15.2 (OCP 4.18 has <1.15.3).

• Channel pipelines-1.16: Floor regressed to >=1.16.0 (OCP 4.18 floor is >=1.15.0).

• Channel pipelines-1.17: Floor regressed to >=1.17.0 (OCP 4.18 floor is >=1.16.0).

Expected Results

• OCP 4.18: The pipelines-1.15 channel skipRange should be updated to include 1.15.4 

• OCP >= 4.19: The catalogs for all OCP versions 4.19 and above must be synchronized to include, at minimum, the same skipRange coverage as OCP 4.18. Newer platform releases should not ship with regressed operator metadata.

Additional Note for OCP >= 4.19

This regression indicates that the catalog generation process for OCP 4.19+ is pulling from an outdated metadata source. Even though these are newer OCP releases, the operator metadata is "stale" compared to the OCP 4.18 stream, which effectively blocks upgrade paths that were previously resolved in older OCP versions.