Re: What's in git.git (stable)

From: Andy Parkins <andyparkins@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 27, 2007, 15:21 UTC
Message-ID: <200704271621.50257.andyparkins@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.0.98.0704270938000.6186@xanadu.home>

On Friday 2007 April 27, Nicolas Pitre wrote:

> I think it is reasonable to say that if you intend to work with a repo
> that contains references to submodules, then you need to upgrade your
> Git version.  It is not like if the Git licensing fees are really
> prohibitive.

:-)  Absolutely.

The case I was thinking about was when the server hosting your project doesn't have submodule support and isn't under your direct control. For example: kernel.org and repo.or.cz. The same is true for those people for whom the IT department manage their central server, and aren't very helpful.

In those cases, that repository is being used as storage, it's bare, doesn't have an index and doesn't ever checkout the files. If submodule support were capable of being stored (not checked out) by an older git, then people can use submodules merely if they have support on the client side.

There's also the distributions to think about - taking Debian as an example - a lot of people stick with stable only (especially for servers) - and stable is stuck with 1.4.4.4. It's going to be a long time before a submodule-capable git hits Debian stable.

Andy

-- 
Dr Andy Parkins, M Eng (hons), MIET
andyparkins@gmail.com