Init submodules when fetching extensions and skins

[claude]

Requested via Slack thread

Before: fetch-repos.py cloned with git clone --depth=1 --branch <REL> and updated with fetch/checkout/reset --hard. Neither touched submodules. Wikibase declares five of them in .gitmodules, including view/lib/wikibase-termbox (gerrit wikibase/termbox), so every tree init-version.sh builds left those directories empty.

After: the clone recurses submodules and the update path runs git submodule update --init --recursive, so view/lib/wikibase-termbox/resources.json and the other view libraries are present. The update path also repairs trees an earlier run left empty.

resources.json is a committed file in the termbox submodule, not a build artifact — TermboxModule::getMessages() reads it while ResourceLoader assembles the startup module, so a missing one throws RuntimeException: Failed to open …/resources.json and that request gets no JS module registry at all (MEDIAWIKI-CS1).

How

Two flags, mirroring what mw-deploy's shim already does for the same trees (shim/mwdeploy_shim.py:543, :796) — the two tools disagreed and only the scaffold was wrong.

Validated locally against a throwaway superproject holding a view/lib/wikibase-termbox submodule:

• python3 -m py_compile scripts/extensions/fetch-repos.py
• fresh clone → resources.json present
• old-style clone (no --recurse-submodules) reproduces the empty directory; fetch-repos.py --update over it restores the file

This is a latent defect fix, not a proven cause of the single-host event on mw-us-east-011 — only that one node of four is affected, which points at that host's synced tree rather than at the scaffold. The ops repair there is still needed.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_01MuStKvs3pWiFUNmf615dgN

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