Prebuild on a branch failed when fetching additional repository that didn't have that branch

[david-bakin]

Bug description

Pushed commits to a new branch lldb-attempts in GitLab repo, prebuild was triggered, it seemed to completely build the custom .gitpod.Dockerfile but then failed with

SYSTEM ERROR
Prebuild failed for system reasons. Please contact support. undefined

Log cut/pasted from prebuild window: https://gist.github.com/david-bakin/51c7240de342148f228133e57983c1bd

Oh wait a sec! When I reopened the prebuild window I see a different SYSTEM ERROR:

Prebuild failed for system reasons. Please contact support. cannot initialize workspace: cannot initialize workspace: git initializer clone: Remote branch lldb-attempts does not exist in https://github.com/lldb-tools/lldb-mi.git

And this is true! My main repo is trying to prebuild branch lldb-attempts but I expected the additional repo to pull its default branch!

Note that the documentation says it will do this!!

When the above configuration is defined then the following additional steps happen when Gitpod workspace is started:

1. If you open a workspace on a branch, Gitpod will clone the same-named branch in all repositories. If such a branch doesn’t exist Gitpod checks out the default branch.

And by the way the "undefined" error on the first prebuild window I saw is bad - it is only by sheer chance, wanting to file an issue on the "SYSTEM ERROR", that I opened the window again from the prebuilds dashboard page and saw the real error.

Steps to reproduce

Set up a repo with an additional repo - any arbitrary one off of the web. Main repo needs a .gitpod.yml that triggers a prebuild when any new branch is pushed. Then push a new branch to the main repo making sure the new branch name is not one that is present in the additional repo. See if it fails this way.

Workspace affected

https://gitpod.io/projects/env-wrappers-cpp/e9acba92-0005-452d-8319-927c48f6db4e

Expected behavior

I expected either the additional repo to pull its default branch, or for there to be a way to specify which branch to pull for the additional repos.

Example repository

No response

Anything else?

No response

Front conversations

[jimmybrancaccio]

I can confirm this is replicable. I was just working on a support ticket where this was happening. Thanks @david-bakin for getting this issue in! 😁 🎉