Resolving “TF401019: The Git repository with name or identifier xxxx does not exist or you do not have permissions for the operation you are attempting.” in Azure Pipelines git Submodule Checkout

Submodule in Git repos help you to keep the common code modules in a separate repo and utilize in multiple other repos. In the classic and YAML build pipelines you can checkout git submodules as explained in the post “Git Repo Submodule Checkout in Azure DevOps Build Pipelines”. However, you may encounter the below issue while running such build pipelines having to perform a git submodule checkout.

Cloning into 'D:/a/1/s/Infra/AzCLI'...

remote: TF401019: The Git repository with name or identifier InfraCLI does not exist or you do not have permissions for the operation you are attempting.

fatal: repository 'https://dev.azure.com/yourorg/DevOps/_git/yourrepo/' not found

fatal: clone of 'https://yourorg@dev.azure.com/yourorg/DevOps/_git/yourrepo' into submodule path 'D:/a/1/s/Infra/AzCLI' failed

Failed to clone 'Infra/AzCLI'. Retry scheduled

How to resolve?

In the Azure DevOps team project settings go to the Settings tab. Then switch off the below two settings.

Once you do that the build pipelines will be able to checkout the submodules successfully.