Re: fatal: cannot rebase with locally recorded submodule modifications

Hello Brice,

The error you are facing here is actually a bug in the 'git pull' command[1]. When one tries to use the '--recurse-submodules' tag with the command, it tends to fail.

Going into a bit detail of 'git pull', the command actually is a combination of 'git fetch' and 'git merge'(unless any other tag is specified i.e. 'rebase' here which would mean a fetch followed by a rebase). Quoting from the documentation:

checked out submodules right now

Using the '--recurse-submodules' tag will try merging/rebasing any changes(updations, additions, deletions, etc.) made to the fetched submodule(s) from upstream, i.e. the _un-checked out_ submodules into our local repository which will cause the error to be thrown as it is not supported right now. This will therefore create the detached HEAD just like the one you obtained.

The "workaround" is to do a 'git fetch' and then merge again after the 'git pull <tag> --recurse-submodules'.

The presence/absence of 'git reset --hard' before the pull won't create any difference to this error in my opinion.

Regards, Shourya Shukla

[1]: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-pull#_bugs