Re: Paper cut bug: Why isn't "git clone xxxx" recursive by default?

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> Mara Kim <mara.kim@vanderbilt.edu> writes:
>>
>>> Apologies if this question has been asked already, but what is the
>>> reasoning behind making git clone not recursive (--recursive) by
>>> default?
>>
>> The primary reason why submodules are separate repositories is not
>> to require people to have everything.  Some people want recursive,
>> some others don't, and the world is not always "majority wins" (not
>> that I am saying that majority will want recursive).
>>
>> Inertia, aka backward compatibility and not surprising existing
>> users, plays some role when deciding the default.
>>
>> Also, going --recursive when the user did not want is a lot more
>> expensive mistake to fix than not being --recursive when the user
>> wanted to.
>
> Having said all that, I do not mean to say that I am opposed to
> introduce some mechanism to let the users express their preference
> between recursive and non-recursive better, so that "git clone"
> without an explicit --recursive (or --no-recursive) can work to
> their taste.  A configuration in $HOME/.gitconfig might be a place
> to start, even though that has the downside of assuming that the
> given user would want to use the same settings for all his projects,
> which may not be the case in practice.
>