Re: [RFC] Third round of support for cloning submodules

From: Steven Grimm <koreth@midwinter.com>
Date: May 21, 2007, 00:39 UTC
Message-ID: <4650EA2E.7070204@midwinter.com>
In-Reply-To: <20070520195930.GX942MdfPADPa@greensroom.kotnet.org>

Sven Verdoolaege wrote:

> It's pretty easy to add a "submodule.*.skip" or "submodule.*.ignore".
> Since the subcloning only happens at checkout, you could set these
> before doing a checkout.
>

Can I take this to mean that you intend the default behavior to be to check out all subprojects, with individual ones suppressed via configuration as needed?

Picture a corporate development environment with a common build system, a couple common libraries, and a bunch of separate products. Product developers will want to check out the build system (which would perhaps be in the superproject), the libraries they need, and their own product. They will rarely want to check out the other products, which could account for the vast majority of the subprojects, and certainly won't want to have to keep track of which new subprojects are appearing so they can add those to the exclude list.

In other words, "I want the superproject and these four subprojects and nothing else" should be a well-supported mode of operation. In many cases developers will already know at clone time exactly what they want.

If I'm misunderstanding your intent, then never mind. :)

-Steve