For example at https://integration.wikimedia.org/ci/job/mediawiki-quibble-vendor-mysql-php72-docker/5393
15:21:40 INFO:zuul.Cloner.mediawiki/skins/Vector:Updating origin remote in repo mediawiki/skins/Vector to https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/skins/Vector 15:21:40 ERROR:zuul.Repo:Unable to initialize repo for https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/npm-test 15:21:40 Traceback (most recent call last): 15:21:40 File "/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/zuul/merger/merger.py", line 51, in __init__ 15:21:40 self._ensure_cloned() 15:21:40 File "/usr/local/lib/python3.5/dist-packages/zuul/merger/merger.py", line 63, in _ensure_cloned 15:21:40 git.Repo.clone_from(self.remote_url, self.local_path) 15:21:40 File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/git/repo/base.py", line 925, in clone_from 15:21:40 return cls._clone(git, url, to_path, GitCmdObjectDB, progress, **kwargs) 15:21:40 File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/git/repo/base.py", line 880, in _clone 15:21:40 finalize_process(proc, stderr=stderr) 15:21:40 File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/git/util.py", line 341, in finalize_process 15:21:40 proc.wait(**kwargs) 15:21:40 File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/git/cmd.py", line 291, in wait 15:21:40 raise GitCommandError(self.args, status, errstr) 15:21:40 git.exc.GitCommandError: Cmd('git') failed due to: exit code(128) 15:21:40 cmdline: git clone -v https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/npm-test /workspace/src/npm-test 15:21:40 stderr: 'Cloning into '/workspace/src/npm-test'... 15:21:40 fatal: remote error: npm-test unavailable 15:21:40 ' 15:21:41 INFO:zuul.Cloner.mediawiki/vendor:Updating origin remote in repo mediawiki/vendor to https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/mediawiki/vendor
I don't know what this repo is supposed to be, but looks like not supposed to be in the list of repos for Zuul-cloner to clone?
Also, while it is a good thing that this particular case is a non-fatal error, at the same time it is worrying that the job is not marked as failure when Zuul-cloner had a fatal error in cloning one of the specified repositories.
Given how much automation we have for detecting what to install and do, it seems plausible that this could in the future be hiding errors. E.g. where an extension can't be cloned for some reason, and thus it is running fewer tests as if it's all good.