Re: RFD: a submodule-like facility that tracks branches rather than commits

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 2, 2010, 16:00 UTC
Message-ID: <7veihuuwdj.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <w2n2cfc40321005020402gdc210b79v2652afa849cf7a60@mail.gmail.com>

Jon Seymour <jon.seymour@gmail.com> writes:

> Has consideration ever been given to a submodule-like facility where
> the configuration information maintained in the supermodule for the
> submodule is not a gitlink but is instead the name of a branch (or
> generally, a symbolic reference within the nested submodule).

I think this comes up from time to time, and there was an even a slightly more concrete suggestion to us 0{40} in the tree object to denote such an entry.

But once people realize that there is no single canonical authoritative repository whose branch heads point at the same commits for everybody in a distributed environment, the line of thought to touch gitlink entries gets retracted or discarded as a misguided idea.

I however don't think it would hurt to enrich .gitmodules with not just the repository information but with branch information to help clones decide which commit (other than what is recorded in the tree of the superproject's commit) on the named remote tracking branch to try out with the superproject's commit.