Appcenter: Allow adding GitHub submodules to build settings

[zippo227]

Describe the solution you'd like
The Build tab will allow you to connect to multiple repositories to ensure that private submodules can be used.

Describe alternatives you've considered
I tried setting up separate builds for the submodules in hopes that the added webhook would allow my project to be built.

Additional context
We share a few private submodules between our projects, and we need to be able to clone those during the build.

[zippo227]

I'd love to hear what you think about this @hamswan @nrajpurkar

[nilofer]

Hi @zippo227, this isn't supported out of the box in App Center today. This can be achieved using a build script. Here's an example of how someone has done this for Bitbucket. We'll keep tracking this issue for better out of the box support for this in the future.

[zippo227]

Hi @nrajpurkar, we will investigate if we're able to work around the issue using your example. Thank you!

[zippo227]

Hi @nrajpurkar, I looked over the build script change, and I don't think it will work for this issue.

these two calls would fail regardless:

[command]git submodule sync --recursive

[command]git submodule update --init --force --recursive

[jmzorko]

Also, github requiring 2FA now means that user / pw in a build script won't work. While it's possible to clone via SSH, that requires that the private key be stored in some persistent env variable on AppCenter, which gives me pause.

We have a lot of NDK in our Android app, including a bunch of cross-platform C implementations that we use on iOS, Android and Windows. Currently this is in a submodule, but because of this issue, we have to include the code directly, which is not great.

[johnnyzen]

Any update on this? I am unable to use appcenter build process because of submodule errors?

[msftbot[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had any activity for 60 days. It will be closed if no further activity occurs within 15 days of this comment.

[msftbot[bot]]

This issue will now be closed because it hasn't had any activity for 15 days after stale. Please feel free to open a new issue if you still have a question/issue or suggestion.