Issue with Jenkins and Git submodules

Question

I am trying to get Jenkins working on a Windows PC and have found a weird issue with submodules.

I have a git repo with three submodules. After a while it seems I got Git itself working on Jenkins so a normal clone works. However the clone does not clone the submodules inside the main repo, so I checked the box to recursively update submodules.

However, when I run my job:

Started by user <User>
Building in workspace X:\Jenkins\<JobName>
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe rev-parse --is-inside-work-tree # timeout=10
Fetching changes from the remote Git repository
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe config remote.origin.url ssh://git@<server>/<repo>.git # timeout=10
Fetching upstream changes from  ssh://git@<server>/<repo>.git
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe --version # timeout=10
using GIT_SSH to set credentials 
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe fetch --tags --progress  ssh://git@<server>/<repo>.git +refs/heads/*:refs/remotes/origin/*
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe rev-parse "refs/remotes/origin/master^{commit}" # timeout=10
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe rev-parse "refs/remotes/origin/origin/master^{commit}" # timeout=10
Checking out Revision b13204ee1c6717a82d1c7a17922f2a477efd119d (refs/remotes/origin/master)
Commit message: "testinggg.."
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe config core.sparsecheckout # timeout=10
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe checkout -f b13204ee1c6717a82d1c7a17922f2a477efd119d
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe rev-list b13204ee1c6717a82d1c7a17922f2a477efd119d # timeout=10
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe remote # timeout=10
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe submodule init # timeout=10
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe submodule sync # timeout=10
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe config --get remote.origin.url # timeout=10
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe submodule init # timeout=10
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe config -f .gitmodules --get-regexp ^submodule\.(.*)\.url # timeout=10
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe config --get submodule.top.url # timeout=10
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe remote # timeout=10
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe config --get remote.origin.url # timeout=10
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe config -f .gitmodules --get submodule.top.path # timeout=10
using GIT_SSH to set credentials 
- C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe submodule update --init --recursive top
FATAL: Command "C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe submodule update --init --recursive top" returned status code 1:
stdout: 
stderr: fatal: Needed a single revision
Unable to find current revision in submodule path 'top'

hudson.plugins.git.GitException: Command "C:/Program Files/Git/bin/git.exe submodule update --init --recursive top" returned status code 1:
stdout: 
stderr: fatal: Needed a single revision
Unable to find current revision in submodule path 'top'

    at org.jenkinsci.plugins.gitclient.CliGitAPIImpl.launchCommandIn(CliGitAPIImpl.java:1903)
    at org.jenkinsci.plugins.gitclient.CliGitAPIImpl.launchCommandWithCredentials(CliGitAPIImpl.java:1622)
    at org.jenkinsci.plugins.gitclient.CliGitAPIImpl.access$300(CliGitAPIImpl.java:71)
    at org.jenkinsci.plugins.gitclient.CliGitAPIImpl$7.execute(CliGitAPIImpl.java:1076)
    at hudson.plugins.git.extensions.impl.SubmoduleOption.onCheckoutCompleted(SubmoduleOption.java:102)
    at hudson.plugins.git.GitSCM.checkout(GitSCM.java:1182)
    at hudson.scm.SCM.checkout(SCM.java:495)
    at hudson.model.AbstractProject.checkout(AbstractProject.java:1276)
    at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.defaultCheckout(AbstractBuild.java:560)
    at jenkins.scm.SCMCheckoutStrategy.checkout(SCMCheckoutStrategy.java:86)
    at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.run(AbstractBuild.java:485)
    at hudson.model.Run.execute(Run.java:1735)
    at hudson.model.FreeStyleBuild.run(FreeStyleBuild.java:43)
    at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:97)
    at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:405)
Finished: FAILURE

What does Git mean when it says:

Needed a single revision Unable to find current revision in submodule path 'top'

I have looked around and found nothing :(

I have replicated this sequence of command on a normal shell and no error appeared.

Any help will be appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

To anybody getting similar issues, check the box for Jenkins to wipe out the local workspace and force repository clone once. That worked for me ;)

Answer 2

Apparently 'top' is one of your submodules. The main repo that contains submodules just stores a commit ID of each of the submodules as reference to them. I interpret the error message as if there is a commit ID for 'top' in the main repo that cannot be found (does not exist?) in 'top'. I'd check this to be sure about this.

In the last project I worked with Git submodules and Jenkins we didn't use the Git plugin's Advanced sub-modules behaviours but executed all the git submodule ... commands in a Builder: Execute shell step of the Conditional BuildStep Plugin . Conditional to be able to abort the build if something goes wrong during these Git commands.

Answer 3

top branch sha mismatched to the commited sha for the submodule.

Consider enabling "Update tracking submodules to tip of branch" option.

This may not work for tags though.