Gitlab-CI on local machine can't clone submodules

GitLab CI/CD
1

I’m trying to execute the CI task locally on my machine but it always fails when trying to clone the projects submodules.

this is my .gitmodules file:

[submodule "api"]
        path = api
        url = ../api.git
        branch = my_working_branch

this is my .gitlab-ci.yml file:

variables:
  GIT_SUBMODULE_STRATEGY: recursive
stages:
  - build
build-model:
  stage: build
  image: our_image_name
  script:
    - ./auto.sh -a build -g MODEL

this is my command line:

gitlab-runner exec docker build-model

but then I get error messages like this:

...
Submodule 'api' (/home/user/projects/api.git) registered for path 'api'
fatal: repository '/home/user/projects/api.git' does not exist
fatal: clone of '/home/user/projects/api.git' into submodule path '/builds/project-0/api' failed
Failed to clone 'api'. Retry scheduled
fatal: clone of '/home/user/projects/api.git' into submodule path '/builds/project-0/api' failed
Failed to clone 'api' a second time, aborting
ERROR: Job failed: exit code 1
FATAL: exit code 1

I’ve tryied setting the CI_REPOSITORY_URL variable, but got no success at all…

Any idea of how to set up my local machine so I can play around with the CI configurations without having push every little test setting?

Better yet, anyway to use my local folder as the volume where it will be built?

2

I’m seeing the same problem, did you find a workaround/solution? It’s only an issue with running the gitlab-runner locally, works OK on the Gitlab CI environment.

3

Unfortunately not… it kept working only on the CI environment, and directly never on my machine.

4

I have the same problem. Before I discoveredthis post on the GitLab Forum I posted a question about it on Stack Overflow (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58299707/how-can-i-use-submodules-when-running-gitlab-runner-locally), which so far has not received any replies.

So I guess this still is impossible.

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