From: W. Trevor King Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2013 10:05:02 GMT Subject: [PATCH v4 3/3] user-manual: Flesh out uncommitted changes and submodule updates Message-ID: <9d0838fec9a9e25ddac636845d12c03cf851cb40.1361267945.git.wking@tremily.us> In-Reply-To: From: "W. Trevor King" If you try and update a submodule with a dirty working directory, you get an error message like: $ git submodule update error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by checkout: ... Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can switch branches. Aborting ... Mention this in the submodule notes. The previous phrase was short enough that I originally thought it might have been referring to the reflog note (obviously, uncommitted changes will not show up in the reflog either ;). Signed-off-by: W. Trevor King --- Documentation/user-manual.txt | 4 +++- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/Documentation/user-manual.txt b/Documentation/user-manual.txt index 3aab106..df7524a 100644 --- a/Documentation/user-manual.txt +++ b/Documentation/user-manual.txt @@ -3739,7 +3739,9 @@ module a NOTE: The changes are still visible in the submodule's reflog. -This is not the case if you did not commit your changes. +If you have uncommitted changes in your submodule working tree, `git +submodule update` will not overwrite them. Instead, you get the usual +warning about not being able switch from a dirty branch. [[low-level-operations]] Low-level git operations -- 1.8.1.336.g94702dd