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custom_build_dir is not enabled by default

Summary

On https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/configuration/advanced-configuration.html#the-runnerscustom_build_dir-section it says:

Please notice, that the feature - if not configured explicitly - will be enabled by default for kubernetes, docker, docker-ssh, docker+machine and docker-ssh+machine executors. It will be disabled by default for all other executors.

However, when I try using GIT_CLONE_PATH on my Kubernetes runner I get an error message.

What's worse, there doesn't seem to be a way to set custom_build_dir via the Helm chart.

Steps to reproduce

.gitlab-ci.yml 
binaries:
 stage: build
 image: golang:alpine
 variables:
  GOPATH: $CI_BUILDS_DIR/go
  GIT_CLONE_PATH: $GOPATH/src/gitlab.com/$CI_PROJECT_PATH
 script:
  - echo whatever

Actual behavior

ERROR: Job failed: setting GIT_CLONE_PATH is not allowed, enable `custom_build_dir` feature

Expected behavior

Job runs normally.

Relevant logs and/or screenshots

job log 
Running with gitlab-runner 11.10.0 (3001a600)
  on [...]
ERROR: Job failed: setting GIT_CLONE_PATH is not allowed, enable `custom_build_dir` feature

Environment description

GitLab runner is deployed on Kubernetes using the Helm chart.

values.yml 
gitlabUrl: [...]
runnerRegistrationToken: "[...]"
runners:
  image: alpine:latest
  imagePullPolicy: always
rbac:
  create: true
checkInterval: 3

 

Resultant config.toml from within the pod:

config.toml contents 
listen_address = "[::]:9252"
concurrent = 10
check_interval = 3
log_level = "info"

[session_server]
  session_timeout = 1800

[[runners]]
  name = "[...]"
  url = "[...]"
  token = "[...]"
  executor = "kubernetes"
  [runners.custom_build_dir]
  [runners.cache]
    [runners.cache.s3]
    [runners.cache.gcs]
  [runners.kubernetes]
    host = ""
    bearer_token_overwrite_allowed = false
    image = "alpine:latest"
    namespace = "gitlab-runner"
    namespace_overwrite_allowed = ""
    privileged = false
    pull_policy = "always"
    service_account_overwrite_allowed = ""
    pod_annotations_overwrite_allowed = ""
    [runners.kubernetes.volumes]

Used GitLab Runner version

Version:      11.10.0
Git revision: 3001a600
Git branch:   11-10-stable
GO version:   go1.8.7
Built:        2019-04-19T09:48:55+0000
OS/Arch:      linux/amd64

Possible solutions

The reason for this is because in here we are checking if it's nil or not, if it's nil we fallback to the default configuration. But the issue here is that it's never nil for new runners since we automatically create [runners.custom_build_dir] as part of the configuration, so it ends up being false by default.

So we need to figure out the following:

  1. Do we want to stick true to the documentation, and have it enabled by default? (I think this is the best option) To do so we need to have to nullify the value explicitly on register to make sure it's set correctly by the default value.
  2. We update the documentation specifying that it's disabled by default.
Edited by Steve Xuereb