Re: [RFC] Submodules in GIT

From: Shawn Pearce <spearce@spearce.org>
Date: Nov 28, 2006, 21:10 UTC
Message-ID: <20061128211012.GJ28337@spearce.org>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0611281407370.20138@iabervon.org>

Daniel Barkalow <barkalow@iabervon.org> wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

>   "cd submodule; git commit foo"
> 
> does the obvious thing, but that should be the same as
> 
>   "git commit submodule/foo" (since it normally is)
> 
> and then it makes sense to let you do multiple commits with a single 
> command when the paths end in different modules, since that's obviously 
> what you're requesting, and then -a must do all of them.

Except what if the submodules have different commit message standards? E.g. one requires signoff and another doesn't? Or one allows privately held information (e.g. its your coporate project) and one doesn't (e.g. its an open source project you use/contribute to)?

But slightly more practical: the change message for the superproject might simply be "resolved bug X, caused by ...". Which may make a lot of sense to the top level project, but makes no sense at all in a submodule involved in the fix as the submodule's developer community doesn't even know what "X" is, let alone how "..." could have caused it.

So you really need to think twice before you apply the same commit message to every project, as each commit message needs to make sense with that one submodule's limited scope, or within the supermodule's larger scope.

But if you really still think that the same commit message makes sense everywhere, we have 'git commit -F'. Write it out in a file and hand it off to -F in each module. This would be easier if git-ls-files grew a new option:

	vi ~/msg
	for m in $(git ls-files --submodules); do git commit -F ~/msg; done
	git commit -F ~/msg