Re: Composing git repositories

From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 31, 2013, 20:34 UTC
Message-ID: <CALkWK0k=g3iFjmpUQA1VkuH2kZsVX1_Hpo=LZ7CuotwHz_1++g@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <5154AACC.7050006@web.de>

Thanks for taking the time and effort to review my thoughts.

Jens Lehmann wrote:

> A
> commit is the thing to record here because it *is* the perfect fit

Might be, but saying that doesn't help one bit.  I want to know why.

> I want to improve the user experience
> of submodules and don't care much in what language we achieve that.

You missed the point entirely. If git didn't have a commit object, would you use a special kind of blob and code around everything to avoid fixing a more fundamental issue?

> What happens when you rename "magit" to "foo" in that branch and want
> to check out an older commit of the same branch? That is one of the
> reasons why that belongs in to a checked in .gitmodules and not
> someplace untracked.

Good point.  I learnt something new.

> Are you aware that current Git code already stats all files across
> all submodules recursive by default? So (again) no problem here, we
> do that already (unless configured otherwise).

I didn't know that.  Why does it do this?

> Guess what: submodules are the solution for a certain set of use
> cases, and tools like subtree are a solution for another set of
> use cases. There is no silver bullet.

That's the core of your argument: submodules already solve what it
was meant to, and we can't get it to solve a larger class of problems.
 In other words, you're implying that it's impossible to build a tool
that will be able to compose git repositories in a way that solves a
very large class of problems.  I don't see conclusive proof for this,
so I have to disagree.

To summarize, everyone seems to be elated with the current state of submodules and is vehemently defending it. I'm a little unhappy, but am unable to express my discontent in better prose. Let's just go back to writing patches, and come back to this if and when I have a full design.