Mount a gitRepo volume in Azure Container Instances

Learn how to mount a gitRepo volume to clone a Git repository into your container instances.

gitRepo volume

The gitRepo volume mounts a directory and clones the specified Git repository into it during container creation. By using a gitRepo volume in your container instances, you can avoid adding the code for doing so in your applications.

When you mount a gitRepo volume, you can set three properties to configure the volume:

Property	Required	Description
repository	Yes	The full URL, including http:// or https://, of the Git repository to be cloned.
directory	No	Directory into which the repository should be cloned. The path must not contain or start with "..". If you specify ".", the repository is cloned into the volume's directory. Otherwise, the Git repository is cloned into a subdirectory of the given name within the volume directory.
revision	No	The commit hash of the revision to be cloned. If unspecified, the HEAD revision is cloned.

Mount gitRepo volume: Azure CLI

To mount a gitRepo volume when you deploy container instances with the Azure CLI, supply the --gitrepo-url and --gitrepo-mount-path parameters to the az container create command. You can optionally specify the directory within the volume to clone into (--gitrepo-dir) and the commit hash of the revision to be cloned (--gitrepo-revision).

This example command clones the Microsoft aci-helloworld sample application into /mnt/aci-helloworld in the container instance:

az container create \
    --resource-group myResourceGroup \
    --name hellogitrepo \
    --image mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/aci-helloworld \
    --dns-name-label aci-demo \
    --ports 80 \
    --gitrepo-url https://github.com/Azure-Samples/aci-helloworld \
    --gitrepo-mount-path /mnt/aci-helloworld

To verify the gitRepo volume was mounted, launch a shell in the container with az container exec and list the directory:

az container exec --resource-group myResourceGroup --name hellogitrepo --exec-command /bin/sh

/usr/src/app # ls -l /mnt/aci-helloworld/
total 16
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root           144 Apr 16 16:35 Dockerfile
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1162 Apr 16 16:35 LICENSE
-rw-r--r--    1 root     root          1237 Apr 16 16:35 README.md
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root          4096 Apr 16 16:35 app

Mount gitRepo volume: Resource Manager

To mount a gitRepo volume when you deploy container instances with an Azure Resource Manager template, first populate the volumes array in the container group properties section of the template. Then, for each container in the container group in which you'd like to mount the gitRepo volume, populate the volumeMounts array in the properties section of the container definition.

For example, the following Resource Manager template creates a container group consisting of a single container. The container clones two GitHub repositories specified by the gitRepo volume blocks. The second volume includes additional properties specifying a directory to clone to, and the commit hash of a specific revision to clone.

{
  "$schema": "https://schema.management.azure.com/schemas/2019-04-01/deploymentTemplate.json#",
  "contentVersion": "1.0.0.0",
  "variables": {
    "container1name": "aci-tutorial-app",
    "container1image": "mcr.microsoft.com/azuredocs/aci-helloworld"
  },
  "resources": [
    {
      "type": "Microsoft.ContainerInstance/containerGroups",
      "apiVersion": "2021-03-01",
      "name": "volume-demo-gitrepo",
      "location": "[resourceGroup().location]",
      "properties": {
        "containers": [
          {
            "name": "[variables('container1name')]",
            "properties": {
              "image": "[variables('container1image')]",
              "resources": {
                "requests": {
                  "cpu": 1,
                  "memoryInGb": 1.5
                }
              },
              "ports": [
                {
                  "port": 80
                }
              ],
              "volumeMounts": [
                {
                  "name": "gitrepo1",
                  "mountPath": "/mnt/repo1"
                },
                {
                  "name": "gitrepo2",
                  "mountPath": "/mnt/repo2"
                }
              ]
            }
          }
        ],
        "osType": "Linux",
        "ipAddress": {
          "type": "Public",
          "ports": [
            {
              "protocol": "tcp",
              "port": "80"
            }
          ]
        },
        "volumes": [
          {
            "name": "gitrepo1",
            "gitRepo": {
              "repository": "https://github.com/Azure-Samples/aci-helloworld"
            }
          },
          {
            "name": "gitrepo2",
            "gitRepo": {
              "directory": "my-custom-clone-directory",
              "repository": "https://github.com/Azure-Samples/aci-helloworld",
              "revision": "d5ccfcedc0d81f7ca5e3dbe6e5a7705b579101f1"
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

The resulting directory structure of the two cloned repos defined in the preceding template is:

/mnt/repo1/aci-helloworld
/mnt/repo2/my-custom-clone-directory

To see an example of container instance deployment with an Azure Resource Manager template, see Deploy multi-container groups in Azure Container Instances.

Private Git repo authentication

To mount a gitRepo volume for a private Git repository, specify credentials in the repository URL. Typically, credentials are in the form of a user name and a personal access token (PAT) that grants scoped access to the repository.

For example, the Azure CLI --gitrepo-url parameter for a private GitHub repository would appear similar to the following (where "gituser" is the GitHub user name, and "abcdef1234fdsa4321abcdef" is the user's personal access token):

--gitrepo-url https://gituser:abcdef1234fdsa4321abcdef@github.com/GitUser/some-private-repository

For an Azure Repos Git repository, specify any user name (you can use "azurereposuser" as in the following example) in combination with a valid PAT:

--gitrepo-url https://azurereposuser:abcdef1234fdsa4321abcdef@dev.azure.com/your-org/_git/some-private-repository

For more information about personal access tokens for GitHub and Azure Repos, see the following guidance:

GitHub: Creating a personal access token for the command line

Azure Repos: Create personal access tokens to authenticate access

Next steps

Learn how to mount other volume types in Azure Container Instances:

• Mount an Azure file share in Azure Container Instances
• Mount an emptyDir volume in Azure Container Instances
• Mount a secret volume in Azure Container Instances