checks: accept supported CIMC 4.2(3e) on APIC 6.1(5)

[monrog2]

Summary

• accept CIMC 4.2(3e) for APIC 6.1(5) on M5 (APIC-L3/M3) and M6 (APIC-L4/M4) controllers, as explicitly supported by the target release notes
• preserve catalog-based upgrade failures for other CIMC versions
• preserve the CSCwo74485 upgrade-ordering failure on affected M4/L4 paths
• document the release-note exception and add regression fixtures for supported and unsupported combinations

Why

The APIC image catalog can recommend a newer CIMC release than the versions explicitly supported by the APIC release notes. The check treated the catalog recommendation as a hard minimum and incorrectly returned FAIL - UPGRADE FAILURE for the supported 4.2(3e) / 6.1(5e) combination reported in #338.

Validation

• focused CIMC compatibility suite: 11 passed
• full suite: 919 passed
• Python compile check passed
• git diff --check passed

Fixes #338

[monrog2]

Blocking review finding: the release-note compatibility override is incomplete and still rejects supported APIC-L4/M4 CIMC versions. GitHub does not permit authors to formally request changes on their own pull requests.

[monrog2]

Blocking: This exact-match exception implements the APIC 6.1(5) release-note table incompletely. For APIC-L4/M4, the same release notes also support CIMC 4.3(2.230207) and 4.3(2.240009). Both remain below the catalog recommendation 4.3(4.252002), so this condition stays false and the check incorrectly returns FAIL_UF for supported upgrades. Please use a model-specific allowlist covering all release-note-supported versions below the catalog recommendation, retain the preceding CSCwo74485 ordering gate, update the documentation, and add PASS tests for both omitted M6 versions plus an unlisted-version failure test.

[monrog2]

Scrubbed integration summary

Pipeline tested commit b43f42e across seven integration jobs and 119 fabric runs.

• 74 CIMC checks passed.
• 30 reported expected catalog compatibility failures.
• 6 triggered the CSCwo74485 APIC-before-CIMC safety gate.
• 9 required manual review because catalog data was unavailable.
• No CIMC check crashed, returned an unexpected status, or lacked result artifacts.
• Python 2.7 and Python 3.8 unit jobs passed.

A live APIC 6.1(5e) run exercised the new logic:

• Three APIC-L4 controllers ran CIMC 4.3(4.241063).
• The on-product catalog recommended 4.3(6.250053).
• The embedded release-note table correctly accepted all three controllers.
• They were absent from the failure details.
• The overall check still failed because a separate APIC-M2 controller ran 4.0(2f) against catalog recommendation 4.1(2m).

This confirms the release-note compatibility path supplements the catalog without bypassing unrelated catalog failures. CSCwo74485 precedence was also preserved.

The original APIC-L4/M4 4.2(3e) targeting 6.1(5) combination was not present in the available integration fabrics, so that exact case remains covered by focused unit tests rather than live integration.