Force index rebuild when a new repo is pulled

[sujik18]

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• Target branch is dev

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• Have tested the changes in my local environment, else have properly conveyed in the PR description
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Fixes #209
Logs:

(mlcflow) sujith@ideapad-g3:~$ mlc pull repo mlcommons@mlperf-automations -v
[2026-01-02 22:35:18,593 repo_action.py:368 INFO] - Repository mlperf-automations already exists at /home/sujith/MLC/repos/mlcommons@mlperf-automations. Checking for local changes...
[2026-01-02 22:35:18,656 repo_action.py:379 INFO] - No local changes detected. Pulling latest changes...
Already up to date.
[2026-01-02 22:35:20,422 repo_action.py:381 INFO] - Repository successfully pulled.
[2026-01-02 22:35:20,422 repo_action.py:395 INFO] - Registering the repo in repos.json
[2026-01-02 22:35:20,424 repo_action.py:168 INFO] - Added new repo path: /home/sujith/MLC/repos/mlcommons@mlperf-automations
[2026-01-02 22:35:20,425 repo_action.py:173 DEBUG] - Forcing Index rebuild ...
[2026-01-02 22:35:20,427 index.py:32 DEBUG] - Repos path for Index: /home/sujith/MLC/repos
[2026-01-02 22:35:20,427 index.py:187 DEBUG] - repos.json modified. Clearing index ........
[2026-01-02 22:35:23,966 index.py:285 DEBUG] - Changes detected, saving updated index and modified times.
[2026-01-02 22:35:23,979 repo_action.py:197 DEBUG] - repos.json and index file has been updated
(mlcflow) sujith@ideapad-g3:~$ 

[github-actions]

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[arjunsuresh]

We are building the index for all the repos here right? So, if a repo has a dependency we'll rebuild the index twice right? Is it possible to rebuild the index per repo? And we also need to fix the index on unregister_repo right?

[sujik18]

We are building the index for all the repos here right? So, if a repo has a dependency we'll rebuild the index twice right? Is it possible to rebuild the index per repo?

I think that would require refactoring of index.py and all the places where Index class is being accessed, because currently index gets build whenever Index class is being accessed as build_index() is called in init function of Index class.

And we also need to fix the index on unregister_repo right?

If we intend to continue script execution after unregister_repo then yes we would need that, but I guess ideally that wont be the case and otherwise whenever the next time a mlc command is run which access Index class, index will be forcefully rebuilded as it will pickup that repo.json is modified

[arjunsuresh]

@sujik18 we can have a custom update function in the Index class to selectively update the entries for a given repo right?

The requirement for handling unregister_repo is when we do pull or a MLC repo which has a fork already registered in mlcflow. Then mlcflow automatically unregisters the fork and pull the new one. But here, the Index entries may not be consistent anymore.

[sujik18]

The requirement for handling unregister_repo is when we do pull or a MLC repo which has a fork already registered in mlcflow. Then mlcflow automatically unregisters the fork and pull the new one. But here, the Index entries may not be consistent anymore.

@arjunsuresh I have added a remove_repo_from_index function to remove index entries of a repo when the repo is deleted, currently called only in mlc rm command, if it looks good same function can be reused to update index entries while unregistering a repo.