Readthedocs.org: Build failed at git clean stage

[spinicist]

Details

Hello,
I am trying to swap from Github Pages (compiled with mkdoc) to ReadTheDocs (and Sphinx) for my C++ project. I wanted to do this in a separate branch before merging to master, but that appears to be failing because the git clean step fails (there is a directory in the master branch that no longer exists in the Sphinx branch).

• Read the Docs project URL: https://readthedocs.org/projects/quit
• Build ID: 7885204
• Build URL (if applicable): https://readthedocs.org/projects/quit/builds/7885204/
• Read the Docs username (if applicable): same as Github

Expected Result

ReadTheDocs completes the build

Actual Result

The build fails at the git clean stage.

[spinicist]

I ended up merging my Sphinx branch to master, but it was still failing. I then tried deleting the project on readthedocs and re-creating it, but it is still failing, now at the git branch step and I cannot see an error message https://readthedocs.org/projects/quit/builds/7889821/

(Sorry for deleting the project before anyone had a chance to look at the previous failure).

[stsewd]

The issue is because you have an invalid submodule https://github.com/spinicist/QUIT/blob/0d81abb965d9c1be0ccbd071d9ee453daad6e4db/.gitmodules#L10 and rtd fails when checking for submodules

[stsewd]

And thanks for using rtd!

[humitos]

@spinicist please, remove the submodule that @stsewd mentioned and try building again. It should work after that. If that's the case, please close this issue.

In case you find any different problem on your building after removing that submodule, please open a new issue.

Thanks and welcome home ;)

[spinicist]

Thanks at @stsewd and @humitos! That invalid submodule must have been hanging around for months 😳 I've excised it and it does now work.

Any idea why rtd didn't report the failing submodule step? When I looked at the raw logs, the last step kept saying it exited with status 0 which was confusing.

[stsewd]

That's another issue #4288

[spinicist]

Great - hopefully that will get resolved in the future.

Final question - is there a way to get rtd to skip the submodule checkout stage? For my project, I don't need the submodules to build the documentation.

Thanks for your fast responses, very much appreciated.

[stsewd]

We have that feature in our next version of the configuration file https://github.com/rtfd/readthedocs.org/pull/4493 (hope we have an opt-in or open beta soon), stay tuned!

[spinicist]

Good news, thanks again.

[humitos]

Happy that you fixed your issue!

[spinicist]

Um, it fixed one issue but now I have another related one (sorry).

I have two branches - master and sphinx - in my github repo. When I pushed my updates to the sphinx branch and triggered a build, it all worked fine (https://quit.readthedocs.io/en/sphinx/). However, when I merged those changes to master and pushed, which is picked up by rtd as latest, I don't get my documentation, but the documentation for one of the submodules (ceres, https://quit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/). For some reason on latest rtd decides to pick up the conf.py for Ceres (https://readthedocs.org/projects/quit/builds/7896020/)

So I could use that beta version ASAP 😉

[stsewd]

You can select a conf.py file from the web admin of your project Admin -> Advanced Settings

[spinicist]

I missed that setting. Hooray! It all works now.