"ambiguous argument 'master...origin/master'" when running on a newly cloned project

[jn73]

We have a jenkins job that runs the gitflow:release command. The job will clear the workspace and make a fresh clone for each build/release.

The gitflow:release plugin will fail with this errror:

mvn -B gitflow:release                                                                                                                                                                                                            git:develop
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Building EventMailService 0.2.35-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO]
[INFO] --- gitflow-maven-plugin:1.4.1:release (default-cli) @ event-mail-service ---
[INFO] Checking for uncommitted changes.
[INFO] Checking for SNAPSHOT versions in dependencies.
[INFO] Fetching remote branch 'origin develop'.
[INFO] Comparing local branch 'develop' with remote 'origin/develop'.
[INFO] Fetching remote branch 'origin master'.
[INFO] Comparing local branch 'master' with remote 'origin/master'.
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 11.717 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2017-03-15T11:05:10+01:00
[INFO] Final Memory: 16M/309M
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal com.amashchenko.maven.plugin:gitflow-maven-plugin:1.4.1:release (default-cli) on project event-mail-service: fatal: ambiguous argument 'master...origin/master': unknown revision or path not in the working tree.
[ERROR] Use '--' to separate paths from revisions, like this:
[ERROR] 'git <command> [<revision>...] -- [<file>...]'
[ERROR] -> [Help 1]
[ERROR]
[ERROR] To see the full stack trace of the errors, re-run Maven with the -e switch.
[ERROR] Re-run Maven using the -X switch to enable full debug logging.
[ERROR]
[ERROR] For more information about the errors and possible solutions, please read the following articles:
[ERROR] [Help 1] http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/MAVEN/MojoFailureException
At this point I only have a ref to the develop-branch in .git/refs/heads.

If I do a 'git checkout -b master origin/master' the ref to master is added to heads and the plugin is able to make the release.

[aleksandr-m]

You mean that there is no master branch on the build machine?
Additional command can be added to try to checkout not existing locally needed branches before releasing. Wdyt?

[jn73]

Yes, no master-branch on the build-machine. We have set the develop-branch as default in gitlab, so that branch is checked out by default. I added a pre-build-step in jenkins:

git checkout -b master origin/master; git checkout develop

Then it works.

I'm evaluating switching from jgitflow to this plugin. We have other jobs using jgitflow and didn't have to add this extra step.

I guess that in most "normal" use-cases you will always have checked out master and develop branch locally so this doesn't happen. But as long as you clone a remote repository that has develop-branch as default and run gitflow:release* (without manually checking out master before) this should happen.

[aleksandr-m]

@jn73 1.5.0 is out.

[jn73]

Thanks! I'll try it out asap 😀