CLONE is only available if “Use new hypervisor” is enabled in your organization’s settings.

CLONE [repository URL] (DEFAULT=branch-name) (files...) [destination]

The CLONE instruction moves files from a repository to the runner.

Files can be:

  • relative (to the layerfile location for sources, and WORKDIR location, or /root if not specified for destination)
  • absolute (from the root of the repository for sources, and filesystem root for destination)

The CLONE directive will automatically add authentication credentials if your account is connected with the associated repository.

If the current Layerfile’s branch is, e.g., feat-1, then CLONE will try to check out the feat-1 branch from [repository URL]. If that branch doesn’t exist, it will fall back to the branch specified by DEFAULT=.

This facilitates multi-repository development by allowing changes to be made to libraries concurrently without needing them to be merged to be used.

CLONE watches files in the same manner as COPY, this means that steps will only re-run if files in the cloned repository change.

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Examples

  • Use CLONE https://github.com/webappio/library.git DEFAULT=master /library to clone the current branch (e.g., feat-1) if it exists, falling back to master otherwise to the /library directory in the runner.
  • Use CLONE https://github.com/my-project/hello.git /hello-project to copy the entire repository contents to the destination /hello-project in the runner.
  • Use CLONE https://github.com/my-project/hello.git DEFAULT=main /package.json /package-lock.json ./ to copy package.json and package-lock.json from the specified project, into the working directory in the runner.