fatal: not a git repository when trying to use in the quilkin repo.

[XAMPPRocky]

Hello 👋 I've been trying to add release-plz as part of the workflow for Quilkin, however for some reason I'm running into a fatal: not a git repository error, for seemingly no reason that I can see given it is a copy paste of the example workflow, and when adding ls -lah I can in fact see the git directory. I've tried a bunch of things to try to fix it and nothing seems to work, would you know what is happening/what I can do?

https://github.com/EmbarkStudios/quilkin/actions/runs/21398808852/job/61603958822

Workflow

  release-plz-release:
    name: Release-plz release
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    permissions:
      contents: write
    steps:
      - &checkout
        name: Checkout repository
        uses: actions/checkout@v6
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0
          submodules: true
          persist-credentials: false
      - &install-rust
        name: Install Rust toolchain
        uses: dtolnay/rust-toolchain@stable
      - name: Run release-plz
        uses: release-plz/action@v0.5
        with:
          command: release
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          CARGO_REGISTRY_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.CARGO_REGISTRY_TOKEN }}

ls -lah

Run ls -lah /home/runner/work/quilkin/quilkin/
total 436K
drwxr-xr-x 16 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 .cargo
drwxr-xr-x  3 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 .ci
drwxr-xr-x  2 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 .config
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner  811 Jan 27 13:21 .dockerignore
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner  623 Jan 27 13:21 .gcloudignore
drwxr-xr-x  7 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 .git
drwxr-xr-x  4 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 .github
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner  991 Jan 27 13:21 .gitignore
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner  135 Jan 27 13:21 .gitmodules
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner 1.3K Jan 27 13:21 BRANDING.md
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner  99K Jan 27 13:21 CHANGELOG.md
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner   39 Jan 27 13:21 CODEOWNERS
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner 6.0K Jan 27 13:21 CONTRIBUTING.md
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner 162K Jan 27 13:21 Cargo.lock
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner 8.6K Jan 27 13:21 Cargo.toml
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner  12K Jan 27 13:21 LICENSE
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner 5.0K Jan 27 13:21 README.md
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner  977 Jan 27 13:21 about.toml
drwxr-xr-x  6 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 build
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner 1.7K Jan 27 13:21 build.rs
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner 3.0K Jan 27 13:21 cloudbuild.yaml
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner 5.2K Jan 27 13:21 code-of-conduct.md
drwxr-xr-x 15 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 crates
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner 2.9K Jan 27 13:21 deny.toml
drwxr-xr-x  4 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 docs
drwxr-xr-x  6 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 examples
drwxr-xr-x  2 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 image
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner 3.0K Jan 27 13:21 justfile
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner  722 Jan 27 13:21 license.csv.hbs
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner 2.4K Jan 27 13:21 license.html.hbs
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner  299 Jan 27 13:21 mise.toml
drwxr-xr-x  8 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 proto
-rw-r--r--  1 runner runner  641 Jan 27 13:21 rust-toolchain.toml
drwxr-xr-x  3 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 sdks
drwxr-xr-x 11 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 src
drwxr-xr-x  2 runner runner 4.0K Jan 27 13:21 tests

release-plz

Using forge 'github'
using manifest path '/home/runner/work/quilkin/quilkin/Cargo.toml'
-- Running release-plz release-pr --
2026-01-27T13:22:18.310866Z  INFO release-plz config file not found, using default configuration
2026-01-27T13:22:18.373260Z ERROR failed to update packages

Caused by:
    0: failed to determine next versions
    1: error while running git in directory `"/tmp/.tmp2FdhV2/quilkin"` with args `["rev-parse", "--show-toplevel"]:
       - stderr: fatal: not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git
Error: failed to update packages

Caused by:
    0: failed to determine next versions
    1: error while running git in directory `"/tmp/.tmp2FdhV2/quilkin"` with args `["rev-parse", "--show-toplevel"]:
       - stderr: fatal: not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git

[marcoieni]

I'm not sure what the issue is. PR welcome in case you find it!
Btw I saw you set manifest_path: /home/runner/work/quilkin/quilkin/Cargo.toml only in the release-pr command.

[XAMPPRocky]

Btw I saw you set manifest_path: /home/runner/work/quilkin/quilkin/Cargo.toml only in the release-pr command.

Yes because it's that's the job that is failing, the other job works.

I'm honestly a bit at wits end if there are no additional steps I can take to debug this because I've already tried debugging everything around release-plz and can't find anything wrong with the repository.

[XAMPPRocky]

@marcoieni I have finally figured out what the bug is. It's a bug in release-plz, not the action.

If a .gitignore includes a pattern like .* which would match the .git repository, when release-plz copies the folder it respects the .gitignore and so it doesn't copy the .git repository.

The fix would be to always copy the .git directory.