[Bug]: Molecule is no longer building the role within a Tox environment

[trfore]

What happened?

Running molecule within Tox will no longer isolate or create the role within Tox's ephemeral directory, {work_dir}/{env_name}/.ansible/roles.

The following package versions work as expected:

• ansible-compat==25.1.1 and molecule==25.1.0
• ansible-compat==24.10.0 and molecule==24.12.0
• ansible-compat==24.9.1 and molecule==24.9.0

It breaks with:

• ansible-compat>=25.1.2 and molecule==25.1.0

• No longer installs the role within the Tox, directory. Molecule will still use the local role, which is typically symlinked from ~/.ansible/roles/ to the repo's folder.

• ansible-compat>=25.1.2 and molecule>=25.2.0

• Ansible/Molecule is unable to find the role anywhere on the system and fails.
• The role is still installed locally, ~/.ansible/roles/.

Relevant Links

• ansible-molecule: PR#4380
• ansible-molecule: PR#4391
• https://ansible.readthedocs.io/projects/dev-tools/user-guide/test-isolation/

Relevant code or playbook

Relevant log output

Ansible version

No response

Control node OS

No response

Target node OS

No response

[trfore]

A single sub-release changes the behavior: ansible-compat 25.1.4, no longer installs collections and roles within the tox env. Stick with 25.1.1.

[trfore]

Re-investigate this using the suggestion from konstruktoid