Re: [RFC] submodule: change submodule.<name>.branch default from master to HEAD

From: W. Trevor King <wking@tremily.us>
Date: Mar 31, 2014, 20:38 UTC
Message-ID: <20140331203825.GH19236@odin.tremily.us>
In-Reply-To: <5339C36B.5020502@web.de>

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 09:35:07PM +0200, Jens Lehmann wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> Am 28.03.2014 04:36, schrieb W. Trevor King:
> > The main drawback to this approach is that we're changing a default,
> > but I agree with John's:
> > 
> > On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 12:21:23AM +0100, Johan Herland wrote:
> >> I expect in most cases where "origin/master" happens to be the
> >> Right Answer, using the submodule's upstream's HEAD will yield
> >> the same result.
> > 
> > so the default-change may not be particularly intrusive.
> 
> I'd prefer a solution that doesn't change any defaults for the
> checkout use case (again). Maybe it is a better route to revert
> this series, then add tests describing the current behavior for
> checkout submodules as a next step before adding the branch mode
> for rebase and merge users again?

The change in defaults should only adversely effect users who:

* don't configure submodule.<name>.branch,
* use --remote updates,
* expect them to pull the master branch of the submodule's upstream, and
* have an upstream whose HEAD doesn't point at master.

Since 23d25e4 (submodule: explicit local branch creation in module_clone, 2014-01-26), we adversely effects users (regardless of update strategy) who:

* don't configure submodule.<name>.branch, and
* update-clone from a submodule upstream that doesn't have a master branch.

But with this patch we'll fix that. Before 23d25e4, we adversly affected users who:

* used non-checkout update strategies, and
* wanted an attached HEAD after update-clones.

All of these were easy to work around, with either:

  $ git config submodule.$name.branch $branch

or:

  $ cd $submod
  $ git checkout $branch

I'm fine reverting 23d25e4 if we want to kick it around some more, but I have trouble imagining a future UI that works for both:

* users that want --remote to pull master even though upstream's HEAD
  points elsewhere, and
* users that want --remote to pull HEAD because upstream doesn't have
  a master branch,

if neither of those users are willing to configure an explicit submodule.<name>.branch.

Cheers, Trevor

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