Inconsistent Behavior using 'Reference'

The repo/workspace (not the cache, the code we’re going to build) that we’re trying to initialize uses several submodules. We’ve notice that if we use ‘clone’ first on the parent repository, then call ‘git submodule update --init --recursive --reference <path>’ inside the parent repository, the same path is passed to all child and nested child repositories.

However, if we call ‘git clone --recurse-submodules --reference <path>’ and try to clone the parent and initialize submodules in one step, Git tries to append the submodule relative path (relative to the parent) to each of the recursive calls, and since the reference repo is bare, this fails.

CRITICAL - Cloning repo: https://github.com/Microsoft/mu_tiano_plus.git INFO - Cmd to run is: git clone --recurse-submodules --reference C:\src2\mu4\mu_basecore https://github.com/Microsoft/mu_tiano_plus.git C:\src2\mu4\mu_basecore\Common\TIANO INFO - ------------------------------------------------ INFO - --------------Cmd Output Starting--------------- INFO - ------------------------------------------------ INFO - Cloning into 'C:\src2\mu4\mu_basecore\Common\TIANO'... Checking out files: 100% (3858/3858), done. INFO - Submodule 'CryptoPkg/Library/OpensslLib/openssl' (https://github.com/openssl/openssl) registered for path 'CryptoPkg/Library/OpensslLib/openssl' INFO - fatal: submodule 'CryptoPkg/Library/OpensslLib/openssl' cannot add alternate: path 'C:/src2/mu4/mu_basecore/.git/modules/CryptoPkg/Library/OpensslLib/openssl/' does not exist INFO - Failed to clone 'CryptoPkg/Library/OpensslLib/openssl'. Retry scheduled INFO - fatal: submodule 'CryptoPkg/Library/OpensslLib/openssl' cannot add alternate: path 'C:/src2/mu4/mu_basecore/.git/modules/CryptoPkg/Library/OpensslLib/openssl/' does not exist INFO - Failed to clone 'CryptoPkg/Library/OpensslLib/openssl' a second time, aborting

As you can see, the parent path is ‘'C:\src2\mu4\mu_basecore\Common\TIANO’, but when clone initializes the submodule, it updates the ‘C:\src2\mu4\mu_basecore’ reference to ‘C:/src2/mu4/mu_basecore/.git/modules/CryptoPkg/Library/OpensslLib/openssl/’, as though the reference were a full repo and it was checking for the submodule repo within the ‘.git’ directory.

If we do this same thing using a ‘clone’ first, and ‘submodule update’ second, the same ‘C:\src2\mu4\mu_basecore’ reference is passed to all submodules (AND nested submodules).

Thoughts? Are these both expected behaviors? Will they be consistent in future versions of git?

Thanks!

- Bret Barkelew