Renovate does not update git submodules when changing branch

[rarkins]

Discussed in #25689

^{Originally posted by mtardy November 10, 2023}

How are you running Renovate?

Self-hosted Renovate

If you're self-hosting Renovate, tell us what version of Renovate you run.

37.54.3

If you're self-hosting Renovate, select which platform you are using.

github.com

Was this something which used to work for you, and then stopped?

I am trying to get this working for the first time

Describe the problem

I created a minimal reproduction repository here https://github.com/mtardy/renovate-submodules-repro.

---

I'm maintaining a project with Renovate that has a git submodule (and use this submodule in go.mod replace directive). Thanks to the option cloneSubmodules it works when I'm working on the main branch.

But when renovate needs to work on a stable branch, let's say v1.0, it git checkout v1.0 but does not update the submodule along (with git submodule update --init <module> for example). So I end up on the v1.0 stable branch with the content of the submodule folder corresponding to the one on the main branch. It then creates a PR with the changes and thus bump the submodule version to the one of the main branch because it never updated it to the correct commit.

I hope this a clear explanation! Is there a way to fix that behavior? Apparently, there are ways to immediately update submodules on checkout:

• https://stackoverflow.com/a/55631474/4561420
• https://stackoverflow.com/a/49427199/4561420
• tl;dr -> git config submodule.recurse true.

Is there a way to add git configs to the renovate run to pass git config submodule.recurse true?

I can do a minimal reproduction repository but I guess this explanation is clear enough maybe? Thanks!!

Relevant debug logs

Logs

Copy/paste the relevant log(s) here, between the starting and ending backticks

Have you created a minimal reproduction repository?

I created a minimal reproduction repository here https://github.com/mtardy/renovate-submodules-repro.

[viceice]

I think we simply need to update submodules when switching base branch.

[mtardy]

I think we simply need to update submodules when switching base branch.

yes, it's just that the submodule.recurse config does that for you automatically (since I don't see a situation in which you don't want that), but you can also git submodule update ... manually.

[viceice]

sounds like an easy feature 😊

[renovate-release]

🎉 This issue has been resolved in version 37.80.1 🎉

The release is available on:

• GitHub release
• 37.80.1

Your semantic-release bot 📦🚀

[mtardy]

Thanks a lot, it fixed my issue and now it works for stable branches. However, I had a failure today in my post-upgrade command:

Command failed: make generate
fatal: --untracked not supported with --recurse-submodules
make[1]: *** [Makefile:35: generate] Error 128
make: *** [Makefile:394: generate] Error 2

Not exactly sure why for now but this is new and I guess related to the fix.

This make generate command basically does go mod tidy && go mod vendor && go mod verify in multiple go.mod.

[rarkins]

Please open a new discussion and ideally with reproduction of the new problem. It seems that the problem is during the Makefile executation so perhaps go is calling git under the hood and the recurse-submodules global flag is problematic

[mtardy]

Please open a new discussion and ideally with reproduction of the new problem. It seems that the problem is during the Makefile executation so perhaps go is calling git under the hood and the recurse-submodules global flag is problematic

I found the culprit and created this discussion #26153.