Re: Avery Pennarun's git-subtree?

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 21, 2010, 19:43 UTC
Message-ID: <AANLkTilivtS4TccZXHz2N_n_2RpY6q_5sw7zwdWKdnYE@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <4C472B48.8050101@gmail.com>

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 17:15, Bryan Larsen <bryan.larsen@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> I've been using Avery Pennarun's git-subtree
> (http://github.com/apenwarr/git-subtree) for a while now and have been
> finding it very useful and problem-free.
>
> Git submodules have been particularly problematic for me on a project which
> contains submodules which contain submodules.  git-subtree "just works",
> without any futzing.
>
> We've also had problems with less git savvy users dropping patches because
> they've occurred inside of a module.

What sort of workflows do you find bad with git-submodule that are better with git-subtree?

The submodule concept is simple, but a lot of the implementation is bad IMO. It doesn't integrate well, e.g. you have to remember to do git clone --recursive, or git clone and git submodule update --init after that, submodules don't remember what branch you wanted, so git submodule foreach 'git pull' doesn't DWYM (although I have a hack for that) etc.

I've also wondered if we couldn't just store all the heads .gitmodules point to inside the main .git repository, and just git gc them when submodules are removed.

I'd planned to maybe submit patches to fix some of these UI issues, knowing about more of them would help. I also haven't tried git-subtree.