Re: [PATCH/RFC v2] git-submodule: multi-level module definition

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mar 5, 2008, 23:18 UTC
Message-ID: <7vd4q8kbey.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1204646661-7776-1-git-send-email-pkufranky@gmail.com>

Ping Yin <pkufranky@gmail.com> writes:

Show 22 quoted lines

> This patch allows multi-level module definition in .gitmodules as
> Linus and Sven Verdoolaege etc. have suggested in mails
> "Let .git/config specify the url for submodules"
> (http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/48939).
> 
> Following shows an example of such a .gitmodules.
>
> .gitmodules with with multiple level of indirection
> ------------------------------------------------------
> [submodule "service"]
>    submodule = crawler
>    submodule = search
> ...
> [submodule "util"]
>    url = git://xyzzy/util.git
> [submodule "imsearch"]
>    path = search/imsearch
>    url = git://xyzzy/imsearch.git
> [submodule "imcrawler"]
>    path = crawler/imcrawter
>    url = git://xyzzy/imcrawter.git
> ------------------------------------------------------

I would agree that allowing the user to use a short-hand to name a group of modules the user is interested in would be a good idea, but I think .gitmodules is a wrong place to do so. The grouping is a user preference, isn't it?

The place the owner of the repository (not the project) expresses which modules are of interest, what transports she wants to use to access it, etc. is $GIT_DIR/config, and .gitmodules is a vehicle to supply hints to be used when the user populates that information.