Ansible 4.10.x and latest Pip not installing correctly in CI

[geerlingguy]

It seems that Python 2.7 and CentOS 7 are hitting the end of the line...

Step 8/13 : RUN pip install $pip_packages
 ---> Running in 5a8dbe28274c
DEPRECATION: Python 2.7 reached the end of its life on January 1st, 2020. Please upgrade your Python as Python 2.7 is no longer maintained. pip 21.0 will drop support for Python 2.7 in January 2021. More details about Python 2 support in pip can be found at https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/development/release-process/#python-2-support pip 21.0 will remove support for this functionality.
Collecting ansible
  Downloading ansible-4.10.0.tar.gz (36.8 MB)
    ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
     command: /usr/bin/python -c 'import sys, setuptools, tokenize; sys.argv[0] = '"'"'/tmp/pip-install-SIuPkY/ansible/setup.py'"'"'; __file__='"'"'/tmp/pip-install-SIuPkY/ansible/setup.py'"'"';f=getattr(tokenize, '"'"'open'"'"', open)(__file__);code=f.read().replace('"'"'\r\n'"'"', '"'"'\n'"'"');f.close();exec(compile(code, __file__, '"'"'exec'"'"'))' egg_info --egg-base /tmp/pip-pip-egg-info-SgmwmG
         cwd: /tmp/pip-install-SIuPkY/ansible/
    Complete output (5 lines):
    /usr/lib64/python2.7/distutils/dist.py:267: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'project_urls'
      warnings.warn(msg)
    /usr/lib64/python2.7/distutils/dist.py:267: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'python_requires'
      warnings.warn(msg)
    error in ansible setup command: 'install_requires' must be a string or list of strings containing valid project/version requirement specifiers
    ----------------------------------------
ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1: python setup.py egg_info Check the logs for full command output.

I think the easiest path forward would be to stick to an older Ansible release on CentOS 7. I tried upgrading to Python 3 in the past but that broke oh-so-many things relating to package management, and as Red Hat seems to have divested itself of supporting CentOS for the use cases I have for it (I've moved on to Rocky/Alma Linux), I don't know if I care to try hacking together a way to run Ansible in CentOS 7 anymore, besides locking in older versions and maybe ending active maintenance on this particular image.