In following scenario i have:

• jboss-eap-installation-manager from EAP 8.0.2
• server.zip of EAP 8.0.1
• maven-repository.zip from EAP 8.0.2

I tried the update: 

./jboss-eap-installation-manager-1.1.11.Final-redhat-00002/bin/jboss-eap-installation-manager.sh update perform --dir='${PWD}/jboss-eap-8.0' --repositories='file://${PWD}/jboss-eap-8.0.2.GA-maven-repository/maven-repository' --offline --yes --local-cache=empty-dir

And got following message:

ERROR: Unable to resolve required channel metadata:
  * org.jboss.eap.channels:eap-8.0:manifest:yaml:1.1.0.GA-redhat-00001
...

The manifest version in the 8.0.2 maven repo is 1.2.0.GA-redhat-00004 (for 8.0.1 it's the 1.1.0.GA-redhat-00001). I don't get why the older version of manifest is even being resolved. 

What is maybe even more concerning is the fact that with the mrrc included in the --repositories:

./jboss-eap-installation-manager-1.1.11.Final-redhat-00002/bin/jboss-eap-installation-manager.sh update perform --dir='${PWD}/jboss-eap-8.0' --repositories='file://${PWD}/jboss-eap-8.0.2.GA-maven-repository/maven-repository,https://maven.repository.redhat.com/ga/' 

The output message is that there is no update:

No updates found.
Operation completed in 1.34 seconds.

I've been able to find that the "previous" manifest version comes form file .installation/installer-channels.yaml (In 8.0.0 the version wasn't present). When I delete the line with the manifest version info, the updated seem to work.

I don't think that the manifest version should be present in the installer-channels.yaml 

What I don't understand is, where the manifest version in installer-channels.yaml even comes from, as it isn't present in server that I provision myself using the installation manager.

This seems to be a production issue, but we should make sure that the installer-channels.yaml with the manifest version doesn't come from installation-manager with some special parameters/config/env variables used, and if it does, we should make the installation-manager work even when the manifest version is set in the installer-channels.yaml