GitLab allows to perform shallow repository clones (and it seems to be the default in recent versions from what I can tell).
In order to run r10k, I need a full repository though, because r10k will copy it to cache and use this copy as a reference. This is what happens when you use a shallow repository:
[2020-05-08 06:53:15 - DEBUG] Replacing /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/modulesync_update and checking out modulesync_update
[2020-05-08 06:53:56 - ERROR] Command exited with non-zero exit code:
Command: git clone /builds/camptocamp/is/puppet/puppetmaster-c2c /etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/modulesync_update --reference /etc/puppetlabs/code/cache/-builds-camptocamp-is-puppet-puppetmaster-c2c
Stderr:
Cloning into '/etc/puppetlabs/code/environments/modulesync_update'...
fatal: reference repository '/etc/puppetlabs/code/cache/-builds-camptocamp-is-puppet-puppetmaster-c2c' is shallow
Exit code: 128
[2020-05-08 06:53:56 - DEBUG] Purging unmanaged environments for deployment...
Git provides a fetch --unshallow command which solves the problem, so we just need to run git fetch --unshallow in the repository before running r10k.
However, some of our (older) GitLab installs don't make shallow clones. Instead, they make full clones with a single detached branch, so we need fetch --all instead.
In order to have it work in all configurations, I'm ending up running:
git fetch --unshallow || git fetch --all
And then run r10k on the repository.
Thanks. This was helpful.