Supporting mepo clone in non-git fixtures?

[mathomp4]

In trying test builds of GEOSgcm with spack, I tried the:

version("11.6.1", sha256="f77a6e292726322b8726d13d7eb67282caaf01f3fe30cba744da6010d6554fef", preferred=True)

which in the end downloads the tar.gz asset:

https://github.com/GEOS-ESM/GEOSgcm/archive/refs/tags/v11.6.1.tar.gz

So spack is trying to do:

wget https://github.com/GEOS-ESM/GEOSgcm/archive/refs/tags/v11.6.1.tar.gz
tar -xf v11.6.1.tar.gz
cd GEOSgcm-v11.6.1
mepo clone

and that last step fails:

❯ mepo clone                                                                                                                                                                                                         at 14:47:04
Found partial clone type [blobless] in .mepoconfig
fatal: not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/mathomp4/.homebrew/brew/Cellar/mepo/2.0.0/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mepo/command/clone.py", line 81, in run
    allcomps = MepoState.read_state()
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/mathomp4/.homebrew/brew/Cellar/mepo/2.0.0/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mepo/state.py", line 127, in read_state
    raise StateDoesNotExistError("Error! mepo state does not exist")
mepo.utilities.exceptions.StateDoesNotExistError: Error! mepo state does not exist

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/mathomp4/.homebrew/brew/bin/mepo", line 8, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
             ^^^^^^
  File "/Users/mathomp4/.homebrew/brew/Cellar/mepo/2.0.0/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mepo/__main__.py", line 15, in main
    cmd_module.run(args)
  File "/Users/mathomp4/.homebrew/brew/Cellar/mepo/2.0.0/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mepo/command/clone.py", line 83, in run
    mepo_init_run(args)
  File "/Users/mathomp4/.homebrew/brew/Cellar/mepo/2.0.0/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mepo/command/init.py", line 20, in run
    _ = MepoState.initialize(args.registry, style)
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/mathomp4/.homebrew/brew/Cellar/mepo/2.0.0/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mepo/state.py", line 74, in initialize
    MepoComponent().registry_to_component(name, comp, directory_style)
  File "/Users/mathomp4/.homebrew/brew/Cellar/mepo/2.0.0/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mepo/component.py", line 109, in registry_to_component
    repo_url = get_current_remote_url()
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/mathomp4/.homebrew/brew/Cellar/mepo/2.0.0/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mepo/component.py", line 209, in get_current_remote_url
    output = shellcmd.run(shlex.split(cmd), output=True).strip()
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/mathomp4/.homebrew/brew/Cellar/mepo/2.0.0/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mepo/utilities/shellcmd.py", line 16, in run
    result.check_returncode()
  File "/Users/mathomp4/.homebrew/brew/Cellar/[email protected]/3.12.5/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/subprocess.py", line 502, in check_returncode
    raise CalledProcessError(self.returncode, self.args, self.stdout,
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['git', 'remote', 'get-url', 'origin']' returned non-zero exit status 128.

The reason it fails is because of the components.yaml:

GEOSgcm:
  fixture: true
  develop: main

env:
  local: ./@env
  remote: ../ESMA_env.git
  tag: v4.29.0
  develop: main
...

We use relative URLs in the subrepos, so to figure out what that URL is relative to it runs:

git remote get-url origin

in the fixture. But the tarfile Github assets ARE NOT GIT REPOS:

❯ git remote get-url origin
fatal: not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git

GitHub strips out the .git/ directory.

So the question is: should we support this? I think it would be "simple" to add an option a la:

mepo clone --remote https://github.com/GEOS-ESM/GEOSgcm.git

(and something similar to mepo init) where if --remote is passed in, we override the get-url call and just says "This is our fixture URL"

[pchakraborty]

So, we need three versions of mepo clone

1. mepo clone -b <version> <url> [<directory>]
2. mepo clone
3. mepo clone --remote <remote-name>

I'm going to leave mepo init be for the time being, and look at #282 later.

[pchakraborty]

@mathomp4 I took a stab at this: see feature/pchakrab/#311-non-git-fixture

This is a very hacky solution that gets the clone working, but there are obvious issues - many commands, including mepo status will fail. I'm not sure if we should support this - let's discuss that.