Fix nested submodule access issues in CI

Dan Notesteinrequested to merge
fix/nested-submodule-access into develop

Summary

  • Fix CI jobs failing with "Could not access submodule 'tests_api'" error
  • The tests_api submodule inside btracker cannot be fetched via CI job tokens
  • Changed jobs to use GIT_SUBMODULE_STRATEGY: none with manual submodule init

Jobs fixed

  • sync: manual submodule init in before_script
  • setup-scripts-test: manual submodule init in script
  • pattern-test: manual submodule + direct tests_api clone via HTTPS

Root cause

GitLab CI job tokens have limited scope and cannot access nested submodules (tests_api is a submodule of btracker, which is a submodule of haf_block_explorer). Even with normal strategy (non-recursive), git validates nested submodule refs and fails.

Merge request reports