Re: submodules' shortcomings, was Re: RFC: display dirty submodule working directory in git gui and gitk

> On Tue, Jan 05, 2010 at 10:46:11AM +0100, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
>> On Tue, 5 Jan 2010, Jens Lehmann wrote:
>> > Yes. This synchronization could be either obsoleted by only using
>> > .gitmodules or automated.
>> 
>> I start to wonder whether the insistence that .gitmodules' settings must 
>> be overrideable makes any sense in practice.
>
> I just read this and felt the need to comment.
>
> Yes, it definitely makes sense in practise to have it overrideable
> otherwise we loose the distributed nature of git for submodules.
>
> Imagine you fork a project and you want to work with others on a change
> that involves chaning a subproject. If you can not override .gitmodules
> you can only work on the central repository.
>
> I am actually working like this in practise. I have a private clone of
> all the subprojects msysgit has and commit/push locally first. Once I
> sense the change is going to be useful for a wider audience I send it
> upstream. This would be more uncomfortable if it is not overideable.
>
> But I know what you mean by the general confusion about manual updates.
> So how about an approach like this:
>
> * clone will initialise all submodules in .git/config from .gitmodules
>
> * if a change in .gitmodules happens git scans .git/config for that
>   entry and in case nothing is there it syncronises the new one and
>   notifies the user.
>
> * if a change in .gitmodules happens and the entry before was the same
>   in .git/config we also automatically update that entry there.
>
> * In every other case we just leave .git/config alone.
>
> Did I miss anything? I think you should get the idea and that it could
> get rid of the confusion caused by manual .gitmodule updates.
>
> cheers Heiko
>
> P.S.: Additionally (for my use case) we could add a "hint mechanism"
> which allows git to "guess" a new submodules address. For example in
> case I have all my local clones on "git@my.server.net:<modulename>.git".
> Now when a new submodule gets seen in .gitmodules it will infer the
> address from the hint configuration and not take the original one from
> upstream.