Re: Possible bug: Git submodules can get into broken state

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 4, 2013, 18:30 UTC
Message-ID: <7vmwtei1wu.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.02.1304041758140.965@lap-x201.fen.aptivate.org>

Chris Wilson <chris+gitscm@aptivate.org> writes:

Show 13 quoted lines

> If your git repo's .gitmodules contains a URL that you don't have
> access to (for example you download someone else's code and it
> references a submodule using their writable git@github.com URL) then:
>
> * git submodule init will add them to .git/config, with the wrong URLs.
>
> * git submodule update will fail to check out the repos, leaving an
> empty directory for the first one, and nothing for the others.
>
> This state is broken (wrong URLs in .git/config), and AFAIK there's
> nothing you can do to check out these submodules without either:
>
> (a) manually hacking them out of .git/config, or

I do not think updating the config is "hacking", but is a perfectly normal thing to do for a submodule user who wants to use a custom URL different from what is recorded in .gitmodules (even when the URL in .gitmodules is _working_, you may have a closer mirror you would prefer to use, for example). It is how the configuration is designed to be used, if I am not mistaken.

So I do not see any breakage here.