Re: gitconfig get out of sync with submodule entries on branch switch

> Answering the original email, as I feel we're going down the wrong rabbit
> hole in the existing thread.
>
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 8:21 AM, Benjamin Schindler
> <beschindler@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> Consider the following usecase: I have the master branch where I have a
>> submodule A. I create a branch where I rename the submodule to be in the
>> directory B. After doing all of this, everything looks good.
>> Now, I switch back to master. The first oddity is, that it fails to remove
>> the folder B because there are still files in there:
>>
>> bschindler@metis ~/Projects/submodule_test (testbranch) $ git checkout
>> master
>> warning: unable to rmdir other_submodule: Directory not empty
>> Switched to branch 'master'
>
> checkout currently doesn't support submodules, so it should neither
> try to delete B nor try to repopulate A when switching back to master.
> checkout ought to not even touch the existing submodule B.

>
>>
>> Git submodule deinit on B fails because the submodule is not known to git
>> anymore (after all, the folder B exists only in the other branch). I can
>> easily just remove the folder B from disk and initialize the submodule A
>> again, so all seems good.
>
> by initializing you mean populating(?), i.e.
>
>     git submodule update
>
> would work without the --init flag or preceding "git submodule init A".
> That ought to not redownload A, but just put files back in the working tree
> from the submodule git directory inside the superprojects git dir.
>
>>
>> However, what is not good is that the submodule b is still known in
>> .git/config.
>
> Oh, I see. You did not just rename the path, but also the name
> in the .gitmodules?

>
>> This is in particular a problem for us, because I know a number
>> of tools which use git config to retrieve the submodule list. Is it
>> therefore a bug that upon branch switch, the submodule gets deregistered,
>> but its entry in .git/config remains?
>
> The config remains as it indicates that you express(ed) interest in
> submodule A, such that when switching branches
>
>   master->renamedToB->master
>
> then we'd still care about A. As for the tools, I'd rather see them use
>
>     git submodule status/summary
>
> instead of directly looking at the config, because the config may
> change in the future.

>
>>
>> thanks a lot
>> Benjamin Schindler
>>
>> P.s. I did not subscribe to the mailing list, please add me at least do CC.
>> Thanks