Re: "submodule foreach" much slower than removed "submodule--helper --list"

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 8, 2022, 03:37 UTC
Message-ID: <221108.86tu3aru3d.gmgdl@evledraar.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <Y2nD9AR8acaGLXDH@nand.local>

On Mon, Nov 07 2022, Taylor Blau wrote:

Show 25 quoted lines

> On Mon, Nov 07, 2022 at 12:01:40PM +0100, Matti Möll wrote:
>> On 16.10.22 00:40, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> >
>> > If one likes the output from "submodule--helper list" so much, I
>> > think your "ls-files" above should be the closest.  There seems to
>> > have existed some logic to squash unmerged entries down to a single
>> > one, too (git-submodule.sh in Git 2.0.0 era has a module_list shell
>> > function that shows what "helper list" should be doing), though.
>>
>> I do actually like that submodule is hoisted out of the scripts but as a
>> matter of fact it seems that the openembedded folks relied on the
>> "submodule--helper list" call and with later git versions that doesn't work
>> anymore.
>>
>> https://github.com/openembedded/openembedded-core/commit/6d9364e5f3535954f65cbbc694ee7933ac1d664f
>>
>> At the end of the day it's kinda their fault to depend on the
>> submodule--helper but it does hinder adoption of new git versions for people
>> using openembedded.
>
> Yeah, I agree. It's unfortunate, but I think we consider anything with
> '--' in the builtin name to be outside of our compatibility guarantee.
>
> I recall a recent message on the list which where Junio said as much,
> but I can't seem to find it :-<.

We've never even documented it, so the uses that have been made of it have been the result of source spelunking.

B.t.w. the openembedded commit above using "git config" is not going to get the same results as "git submodule--helper list", or the equivalent "git submodule foreach", but perhaps it works well enough for what they need it for...