Release Database: Components Not From GitHub Not Uploading

[CodeGat]

Background

In the latest release of ACCESS-ESM1.6, during a manual upload to the release database, the oasis3-mct component uses the @OASIS3-MCT_5.2 version, which points to a tag on GitLab.

Currently the release database upload script doesn't accept non-GitHub component URLs, so we need to decide:

• Should we accept components not hosted on GitHub?
• If so, should we hyperlink to non-GitHub hosts?
• If so, should we use authenticated API requests so we don't hit the rate limit?
• If so, how do we get the appropriate token? We don't have much of a prescence on GitLab.

Implementation Details

• GitLab also has a REST API, see https://docs.gitlab.com/api/rest/
• Requests require either a project ID or URL-encoded project string. Project strings are kind of like the OWNER/REPO string on GitHub.
  • For example, curl https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/cerfacs%2Foasis3-mct/repository/tags/OASIS3-MCT_5.2 or curl https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/11283050/repository/tags/OASIS3-MCT_5.2
• Would need to add another secrets.TRACKING_SERVICES_FETCH_REPO_TOKEN for both GitHub and GitLab, to all MDRs where that was relevant. It can be an optional addition (defaults to unauthenticated for GitLab URLs) so we don't have to do another major version of build-cd.

[aidanheerdegen]

We've pretty much defaulted to use our own forks for model components. I don't think there is a mechanism to directly fork a GitLab repo, but we can manually clone and push to an "effective fork" in our org.

That would be my preference.

[CodeGat]

Fair enough. What shall we do with the release that currently uses the GitLab source - https://github.com/ACCESS-NRI/ACCESS-ESM1.6/releases/tag/2025.12.001 ? I can mock up an appropriate JSON blob that will be accepted (and linked to) in the Release database, but will this become a recurrent issue that needs fixing?

[CodeGat]

After a conversation with @aidanheerdegen, this will probably be a once off and we don't need to fix this in build-cd. We do need to update the JSON packet we send to tracking_services for this Release