[RFC] remove/deprecate 'submodule init' and 'sync'

From: W. Trevor King <wking@tremily.us>
Date: Nov 30, 2012, 17:53 UTC
Message-ID: <20121130175309.GA718@odin.tremily.us>
In-Reply-To: <20121130032719.GE29257@odin.tremily.us>

On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 12:19:04AM +0100, Jens Lehmann wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

> Am 26.11.2012 22:00, schrieb W. Trevor King:
> > From: "W. Trevor King" <wking@tremily.us>
> > 
> > This allows users to override the .gitmodules value with a
> > per-repository value.
> 
> Your intentions makes lots of sense, but your patch does more than
> that. Copying the branch setting into .git/config sets the initial
> branch setting into stone. That makes it impossible to have a branch
> "foo" in the superproject using a branch "bar" in a submodule and
> another superproject branch "frotz" using branch "nitfol" for the
> same submodule. You should use the branch setting from .git/config
> if present and fall back to the branch setting from .gitmodules if
> not, which would enable the user to have her own setting if she
> doesn't like what upstream provides but would still enable others
> to follow different submodule branches in different superproject
> branches.

I've mulling this over, and when I started coding support for submodule.<name>.remote, I had an idea.

On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 10:27:19PM -0500, W. Trevor King wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 08:11:20PM -0500, Phil Hord wrote:
> > I've always felt that the "origin" defaults are broken and are simply
> > being ignored because most users do not trip over them.  But ISTR that
> > submodule commands use the remote indicated by the superproject's
> > current remote-tracking configuration, with a fallback to 'origin' if
> > there is none.  Sort of a "best effort" algorithm, I think.  Am I
> > remembering that wrong?
> 
> The current code uses a bare "git-fetch".  I'm not sure what that
> defaults to if you're on a detached head.  If it bothers you, I'm fine
> adding the submodule.<name>.remote option in v6.

In my v5 patch, I check for submodule.<name>.remote first in the usual `git config` files. If I don't find what I'm looking for I fall back on .gitmodules (basically Jens' suggestion). However, my initial copying-to-.git/config approach was mostly done to mimic existing configuration handling in git-submodule.sh. Since I agree with Jens on configuration precendence, and I now had two options to read (.branch and .remote), I thought I'd pull the logic out into its own function (code included at the end). While I was shifting the existing submodule config handling over to my new function, I noticed that with this logic, `submodule init` doesn't really do anything important anymore. Likewise for `submodule sync`, which seems to be quite similar to `init`.

What to do about this? `init` has been around for a while, so we can't just remove it (maybe in 2.0?). Leaving it in place is not really a problem though, it just means that the user is locking in the current .gitmodules configuration (as Jens pointed out with respect to .branch).

I may be way off base here, as I'm fairly new to submodules in general and these two commands in particular, but I thought I'd float the idea.

Cheers, Trevor

---
#
# Print a submodule configuration setting
#
# $1 = submodule name
# $2 = option name
# $3 = default value
#
# Checks in the usual git-config places first (for overrides),
# otherwise it falls back on .gitmodules.  This allows you to
# distribute project-wide defaults in .gitmodules, while still
# customizing individual repositories if necessary.  If the option is
# not in .gitmodules either, print a default value.
#
get_submodule_config()
{
	name="$1"
	option="$2"
	default="$3"
	value=$(git config submodule."$name"."$option")
	if test -z "$value"
	then
		value=$(git config -f .gitmodules submodule."$name"."$option")
	fi
	printf '%s' "${value:-$default}"
}

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