From: Paulius Zaleckas Date: Tue, 14 Jul 2026 13:29:55 GMT Subject: [PATCH v4 0/2] fetch: make submodule fetch errors configurable Message-ID: <20260714132959.3368867-1-paulius.zaleckas@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20260710122655.3066377-1-paulius.zaleckas@gmail.com> When fetching with --recurse-submodules, git currently exits with a non-zero status if any submodule references an OID that is not reachable from the submodule's remote. This situation arises naturally when an upstream branch is still in preparation (e.g. a topic branch in a merge window): the local branch does not depend on the missing commit, so a hard failure is unnecessarily disruptive. Patch 1 fixes a pre-existing NEEDSWORK in submodule.c where a phase-1 fetch failure was recorded immediately, even when a phase-2 OID-based retry was about to be scheduled. After this fix the existing fatal behaviour is preserved but the logic is now structured so that errors are only recorded when the phase-2 retry actually fails, or when there is no phase-2 retry to fall back on. Patch 2 introduces fetch.submoduleErrors (fail|warn) and --submodule-errors=(fail|warn) to let users opt into non-fatal behaviour. The default remains fail for full backwards compatibility. Changes in v4: - Forward an explicit --submodule-errors=fail to child fetches as well, so the command line overrides fetch.submoduleErrors=warn config in the per-remote children of fetch --all/--multiple (noticed by Junio) Changes in v3: - Report a phase-1 failure also when the gitlink commits are already present locally, instead of silently succeeding - Route "Could not access submodule" through record_fetch_error() so it shows up in the error summary and honors the warn mode - Forward --submodule-errors to child fetches so it takes effect for fetch --all/--multiple and nested submodule recursion - Add tests for all of the above - Documentation: don't imply git pull takes --submodule-errors, minor wording and placement fixes Changes in v2: - Fix option synopsis to use (fail|warn) instead of - Add --submodule-errors documentation to Documentation/fetch-options.adoc Paulius Zaleckas (2): submodule: fix premature failure in recursive submodule fetch fetch: add fetch.submoduleErrors to make submodule fetch errors non-fatal Documentation/config/fetch.adoc | 14 +++ Documentation/fetch-options.adoc | 8 ++ builtin/fetch.c | 46 ++++++++- submodule.c | 58 ++++++++--- submodule.h | 7 +- t/t5526-fetch-submodules.sh | 161 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 6 files changed, 277 insertions(+), 17 deletions(-) -- 2.54.0