Cloning Another Bitbucket Repository in Bitbucket Pipelines

I recently had a use case where I wanted to clone another Bitbucket repository during a Pipelines execution. Doing this is very simple, but there is a lot of conflicting information online, so I thought I would document the steps here.

Imagine a very simple Pipeline that looks like this:

pipelines:

  default:

    - step:

        script:

          - git clone git@bitbucket.org:ayushsharma/my-submodules.git

The repository that triggers the Pipeline will need permission to clone my-submodules.

Create SSH Keys for the Main Repository

In Bitbucket, go to the repository SSH keys page under Settings > Pipelines > SSH keys.

Next, click on Generate keys to let Bitbucket auto-generate a random, secure SSH key-pair. You can also upload a custom key-pair if you want.

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Once completed, click Copy public key. We will need to paste this in the next step.

Add SSH Public Key in the Target Repository

Go to the my-submodules repository. Under Settings > General > Access keys, you should see the option to add SSH public keys to gain read-only access.

Click Add key, enter a label, and paste the public key we copied in the previous step.

Our main repository now has read-only permissions to clone my-submodules from within its Pipelines. After the above configuration, executing a build for the repository will show all green.

Further Reading

Publishing API Console on Bitbucket Pages

Source Control Using Atlassian Bitbucket