Empty page.git object in CI... is shallow clone the only possible cause?

[chris-dura]

When I build locally or in dev mode, I'm able to get access to the page.git object (eg, for Contributors and Last Updated).
However, when I build the project in CI/CD on our self-hosted GitLab the page.git object is empty.

The docs for @vuepress/plugin-git mention that typical CI workflows create shallow clones, so it may be that the GitLab CI Runner is creating a shallow clone: https://v2.vuepress.vuejs.org/reference/plugin/git.html#usage

Unfortunately, there is an open issue in GitLab that indicates the settings meant to disable shallow clones are no longer working as they should: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/350100

So, I'm waiting for the DevOps team to verify or confirm a workaround that the Runners are creating unshallow clones.

But, I have a feeling that may not be the issue, and my question is this:

Could the empty git:{} be caused by something other than a shallow clone? Is it feasibly possible that the git user the Runner environment is utilizing ONLY has permission to clone, and not to access the commit history, or updatedTime, etc?

[meteorlxy]

Well, that depends on your runner env. You can try to execute those commands used by the git plugin to check if they could get correctly stdout:

https://github.com/vuepress/vuepress-next/blob/b3565cba73d0e87540b563d86792bbd2bd219de0/ecosystem/plugin-git/src/node/utils/checkGitRepo.ts#L8

https://github.com/vuepress/vuepress-next/blob/b3565cba73d0e87540b563d86792bbd2bd219de0/ecosystem/plugin-git/src/node/utils/getContributors.ts#L8-L15

https://github.com/vuepress/vuepress-next/blob/b3565cba73d0e87540b563d86792bbd2bd219de0/ecosystem/plugin-git/src/node/utils/getUpdatedTime.ts#L10-L23

[chris-dura]

fwiw, the root cause was actually that SOMEONE switched from using the node:16 Docker image to using the node:16-alpine Docker image... which is slimmer than slim, and (I believe) does not include git... which would probably not be an issue for most of our projects, as running the npm run build command doesn't usually require git... but since we're using the @vuepress/plugin-git... we need git to be installed in the Docker image.

But, @meteorlxy your suggestion helped put me into the context where I could even notice that 😵‍💫 , so thanks!