Re: [RFC v2] submodule: Respect requested branch on all clones

> 2014/1/5 W. Trevor King:
> > Adding a check to only checkout submodule.<name>.branch if
> > submodule.<name>.update was 'rebase', 'merge', or 'none' would be
> > easy, but I don't think that makes much sense.  I can't see any
> > reason for folks who specify submodule.<name>.branch to prefer a
> > detached HEAD over a local branch matching the remote branch's
> > name.
> 
> I think the reason is that it still matches the original use case of
> submodules devs:
> - the maintainer decides the specific commit developers should have;
> - developers checkout that commit and don't pull (you can't do "git
> pull" in a detached HEAD);
> - they optionally get the upstream commit from the specified
> "submodule.<name>.branch" with "--remote". They are still in a
> detached HEAD and can't do "git pull".
> 
> Maybe who coded submodules at first was thinking that the best way to
> contribute to a project is to checkout that repository, and not work
> in the submodule. As said, this works well when the submodule
> repository is a full project, and not a bunch of shared code.

> > If they prefer checkout updates, the first such update will return
> > them to a detached HEAD.  If they prefer merge/rebase updates,
> > future updates will keep them on the same branch.  All my commit
> > does is setup that initial branch for folks who get the submodule
> > via 'update', in the same way it's currently setup for folks who
> > get the submodule via 'add'.
> 
> My patch is in the same spirit but wants to obtain the same by being
> 100% additive and by not altering existing behavior in any way.

> Also it covers:
> - an "autoremote" behavior when the user wants an attached HEAD:
> with your patch "--remote" is still needed to really update the
> branch with "git submodule update":
> - voluntary reattach/detach the HEAD with command line;
> - ff-only merge of changes in the case of "checkout" in an attached
> HEAD (doing "git checkout <branch>" is not enough);
> - reattach of the HEAD with orphaned commits.