Re: [RFC] What to you think about a loose status for submodules?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 20, 2010, 19:45 UTC
Message-ID: <7v7hrc36hd.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20100120181652.GA10803@book.hvoigt.net>

Heiko Voigt <hvoigt@hvoigt.net> writes:

> Even though there has not been much more work on this item the idea has
> become much clearer for me since the last discussion. Now that sparse
> checkout is in master I would like to generalize this idea a little
> further.

Selective init/update of submodules is a fundamental design element and the presense of "sparse checkout" does not affect it.

In the remainder of your message

> How about ...

you are talking about a change that would also apply to a project that does not have submodules at all, and you would want to involve Nguyễn in the discussion.

I have no strong opinion if attributes is the right vehicle to carry this information, except for this part:

> Does the current sparse implementation work with submodule entries as
> well? Then it could be even more straightforward to implement than the
> previous idea.

What the project ships as grouping suggestions to cloners is merely a small part of the information on submodules (others such as URL and name are already found in .gitmodules, and .gitmodules are designed to be extensible by allowing other "config"-ish items in it). Separating only the grouping info into a different file (I don't particularly care if you use .gitattributes or something else; as long as it is not .gitmodules, the argument is the same) is not such a good idea.