submodules: false not working - Checkout action still tries to checkout submodules that were removed.

[rr-james-hickman]

I have removed some old submodules from our project, but the checkout action fails due to an error when checking out submodules:

Setting up auth
[147](https://github.com/<ORGANIZATION>/<PROJECT>/actions/runs/3323339960/jobs/5493559562#step:3:152)
  /usr/bin/git config --local --name-only --get-regexp core\.sshCommand
[148](https://github.com/<ORGANIZATION>/<PROJECT>/actions/runs/3323339960/jobs/5493559562#step:3:153)
  /usr/bin/git submodule foreach --recursive git config --local --name-only --get-regexp 'core\.sshCommand' && git config --local --unset-all 'core.sshCommand' || :
[149](https://github.com/<ORGANIZATION>/<PROJECT>/actions/runs/3323339960/jobs/5493559562#step:3:154)
  Error: fatal: No url found for submodule path 'submodules/EBTExtractor' in .gitmodules
[150](https://github.com/<ORGANIZATION>/<PROJECT>/actions/runs/3323339960/jobs/5493559562#step:3:155)
  Error: The process '/usr/bin/git' failed with exit code 128

I have explicitly set submodules: false in the checkout action job, but it still appears to be trying to checkout submodules:

      - name: Checkout repository V3
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
        with:
          submodules: false

I have verified that all submodule references have been removed from the repository directory:

• All submodules/xxx directories and files were deleted.
• .gitmodules file was deleted.
• All submodules entries in .git/config were deleted.

It seems like the only explanation is the checkout action is not properly respecting the submodules: false setting.

Can someone please take a look at this and see if it's an issue in the action?

[gobetti]

I had the same issue. The key is here:

All submodules entries in .git/config were deleted.

The .git directory is local, you don't commit it, so in the runner machine that directory still exists. actions/checkout doesn't always fully delete the clone directory in the builder machine (see git-directory-helper.ts) so .git/config is still there with the old submodule references after changing submodules: true to false.

My workaround was to erase the clone directory in the runner machine.

[gobetti]

related:

• Checkout is not cleaning properly after bad submodule added #933
• [bug] Submodule with missing link in .gitmodules fails #788
• submodules=false not working #677
• Getting actions workflow failed at checkout stage with error #354
  and potentially more... too many open issues

[rr-james-hickman]

@gobetti Thanks for the details information! This was super helpful and appears to be the root of our issue.
For us, we also have a daily cron job that runs and compares are previous release branches to the development branch to ensure development is always up-to-date with any patches made to release branches.
Some of the older release branches still had the submodules. So we deleted those branches and rebooted the runners to ensure a clean slate.

All seems well now :)

[joshgoebel]

I see this was closed, but is their as associated PR that resolved this issue such that submodules:false would prevent this behavior in the future - even if the start-up state was "inconsistent"? Thanks.