[SETUP] Fix Ansible Collections Path for apt-installed Ansible

[pierreribeiro]

[SETUP] Fix Ansible Collections Path for apt-installed Ansible

Problem Statement

Severity: HIGH
Impact: Blocks ansible-lint validation, affects Phase 2, 4, and all Homebrew-dependent phases

Discovery

During Phase 4 validation (2025-11-04), discovered that apt-installed Ansible does not automatically detect system-level collections installed in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/ansible_collections.

Symptoms

$ ansible-lint roles/language_runtimes/

[WARNING]: Error loading plugin 'community.general.homebrew': 
No module named 'ansible_collections.community'

WARNING: Unable to load module homebrew at 
roles/language_runtimes/tasks/python.yml:13 for options validation

Root Cause

When Ansible is installed via apt, it uses system Python and stores collections in:

/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/ansible_collections/

However, Ansible's default collection search path does not include this location.

Verification

Collections ARE installed, but not in search path:

$ ls /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/ansible_collections
amazon     community     google      ...

Permanent Solution

Update scripts/phase-0-bootstrap.sh to configure paths after Ansible installation:

# Add to shell config
export ANSIBLE_COLLECTIONS_PATH=~/.ansible/collections:/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/ansible_collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections

# Add to ansible.cfg
collections_path = ~/.ansible/collections:/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/ansible_collections:/usr/share/ansible/collections

Testing Validation

# Verify paths
ansible --version | grep "collection location"

# Test module loads
ansible-doc community.general.homebrew

# Test lint
ansible-lint roles/language_runtimes/

Priority

Priority: HIGH
Blocking: Phase 4 validation
Effort: LOW (15 minutes)

Discovered by: @pierreribeiro
Date: 2025-11-04