Re: Composing git repositories

Ramkumar Ramachandra wrote:

For this, ideally what we'd want is a file that lists repositories that should be cloned at the same time as cloning the dotfiles repository, to reconstitute your dotfiles on a new machine. From then on, when acting on the dotfiles repository (with "git status", "git commit", etc) git should not pay attention to the magit subdirectory at all, because there is no coupling between the two.

Did I get that right?

That sounds similar to what Junio does with the Meta subdirectory in his git development worktree. I don't think submodules are a good fit, but it might make sense to start respecting a .motd file to allow the following in a hypothetical world where everyone who clones git uses the same scripts Junio does:

	$ git clone git://repo.or.cz/git.git
	Cloning into 'git'...
	remote: Counting objects: 151283, done.
	remote: Compressing objects: 100% (38546/38546), done.
	remote: Total 151283 (delta 111004), reused 151073 (delta 110797)
	Receiving objects: 100% (151283/151283), 36.39 MiB | 7.66 MiB/s, done.
	Resolving deltas: 100% (111004/111004), done.

	Don't forget to "git clone -b todo git://repo.or.cz/git.git git/Meta"
	for maintenance scripts.
	$

That would allow you to include an arbitrary setup script (including cloning dependencies as well as running "autoreconf" or whatever) and give people cloning a quick reminder to inspect it if paranoid and then run it.

Jonathan