Unactionable error while publishing to private gitlab registry

Reproduce the devcontainer features publish command from the issue with --log-level trace, focusing on the bearer-token request and subsequent tag-list request. Trace the failure far enough to expose an actionable registry error instead of only Failed to publish; done means the command reports a useful diagnostic for this private registry case.

Hi there. I couple of weeks ago I set up a repository of private devcontainer features on our gitlab instance and it did work pretty well.

Something has changed since then and I suspect it's probably on the side of the gitlab registry, but the error I'm getting does not allow me to investigate further, although I'm using the trace log level.

at 12:26:21 ❯ devcontainer features publish features/src --registry registry.taktsoft.com --namespace taktsoft/devcontainers/features --log-level trace

[2 ms] @devcontainers/cli 0.80.3. Node.js v22.18.0. linux 6.8.0-87-generic x64.
[2 ms] Packaging feature collection...
[3 ms] Processing feature: collection-base...
[17 ms] Processing feature: hello...
[21 ms] Processing feature: local-bin...
[25 ms] Processing feature: secure-cli...
[30 ms] Packaged 4 features!
[30 ms] Processing feature: collection-base...
[30 ms] > input: registry.taktsoft.com/taktsoft/devcontainers/features/collection-base
[30 ms] >
[30 ms] > resource: registry.taktsoft.com/taktsoft/devcontainers/features/collection-base
[30 ms] > id: collection-base
[30 ms] > owner: taktsoft
[30 ms] > namespace: taktsoft/devcontainers/features
[30 ms] > registry: registry.taktsoft.com
[30 ms] > path: taktsoft/devcontainers/features/collection-base
[30 ms] >
[30 ms] > version: latest
[31 ms] > tag?: latest
[31 ms] > digest?: undefined
[31 ms] Feature Annotations: {"dev.containers.metadata":"{\"name\":\"Taktsoft base collection\",\"id\":\"collection-base\",\"version\":\"0.0.1\",\"description\":\"A wrapper feature forcing the install of multiple other recommended features\",\"installsAfter\":[\"ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/common-utils\"],\"dependsOn\":{\"ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/common-utils:2\":{\"installZsh\":\"true\",\"username\":\"vscode\",\"userUid\":\"1000\",\"userGid\":\"1000\",\"upgradePackages\":\"true\"},\"ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/git:1\":{\"version\":\"latest\",\"ppa\":\"false\"},\"ghcr.io/stuartleeks/dev-container-features/shell-history:0\":{},\"ghcr.io/skriptfabrik/devcontainer-features/gitlab-cli:1\":{},\"registry.taktsoft.com/taktsoft/devcontainers/features/secure-cli:0.0.1\":{}}}"}
[31 ms] Fetching published versions...
[128 ms] [httpOci] Attempting to authenticate via 'Bearer' auth.
[129 ms] [httpOci] Found auths entry in '/home/max/.docker/config.json' for registry 'registry.taktsoft.com'
[129 ms] [httpOci] Attempting to fetch bearer token from:  https://git.taktsoft.com/jwt/auth?service=container_registry&scope=repository:taktsoft/devcontainers/features/collection-base:pull
[428 ms] [httpOci] 200 on reattempt after auth: https://registry.taktsoft.com/v2/taktsoft/devcontainers/features/collection-base/tags/list
[428 ms] (!) ERR: Failed to publish 'registry.taktsoft.com/taktsoft/devcontainers/features/collection-base'

It tries to get the tag list, but then only fails with

[428 ms] (!) ERR: Failed to publish 'registry.taktsoft.com/taktsoft/devcontainers/features/collection-base'

Any idea on how I can get even more details about the error than just the trace log level?

Any help is much appreciated! ❤️

p.s.

We had to change the s3 backend for gitlab and decided to start with a completely empty registry instead of migrating the old bucket. No I idea if this could cause problems, but for other artifacts the registry works just fine.