Re: [PATCH] doc: mention that 'git submodule update' fetches missing commits

From: Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 19, 2019, 03:55 UTC
Message-ID: <9B605234-8F49-4FEB-9156-22367E01B08B@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqsgs4nn6k.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>

Hi Junio,

First off, sorry for not answering this summer. Dscho suggested [1] I try to convince you.

Show 6 quoted lines

> Le 20 juin 2019 à 14:09, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> a écrit :
> 
> The additional text may not be wrong per-se, but isn't it fairly
> obvious that there is no other way than to fetch, in order to
> "update the registered submodules to match what the superproject
> expects »,

Well, that’s true, but I think that it is important in the documentation to be thorough as to what git commands talk to a remote in what circumstances, and which don’t (this is something that is sometimes not obvious to new users in my opinion). Since by default ‘git pull’ will fetch missing submodule commits, it may not be obvious that ‘git submodule update’ will also fetch from a remote if need be.

> How else would the subcommand come up
> with the missing commit out of thin air?

Since 'git pull’ will fetch submodules changes, and is usually run first, the commits are usually already there, but I think it’s worth mentioning that they will be fetched if they need to.

I like thoroughness in software documentation :)

Philippe.

[1] https://github.com/git/git/pull/596