The script used for testing if there are Python package updates available has its own Python virtual environment. The requirements file used for this virtual environment is also checked by the script to detected available package updates.

Unfortunately, the input list of packages for this is currently fully static, which has caused some issues since existing supported platform (Debian 10 Buster) currently ships with Python 3.7, which is no longer supported either by Python developers, nor by developers of pip-tools (which is used by the update checks mechanism). Because of this, it is not possible to upgrade pip past the version 23.1.2, nor pip-tools past the version 6.14.0. This in turn generates a lot of warnings about available package updates, in spite of not being to apply them currently.

The following should be done:

• Update the common role.
  • Add parameters pip_check_requirements_in and pip_check_requirements_py3_in.
  • Parameters should be list of input requirements for the pip_check_requirements virtual environments.
  • Default values should not be introducing specific version pins (as currently is the case).
• Update role reference documentation.
• Update release notes.