Re: `git submodule update --single-branch` tracks HEAD instead of branch from .gitmodules

From: D. Ben Knoble <ben.knoble@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 20, 2025, 16:05 UTC
Message-ID: <CALnO6CBdc=5KpUwweMzxpT+9CBXZVP4AG4bFS9sGucJJVmzjtQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmkf25oq2vka2kipfqfybngkqffbljqygmtrtiujgsrao7g2wq@k56wxix4oism>

On Mon, Nov 17, 2025 at 4:28 AM Uwe Kleine-König <u.kleine-koenig@baylibre.com> wrote:

Show 29 quoted lines

>
> Hello,
>
> for a project I'm using several submodules, showing my issue with just
> one of them
>
>         $ git ls-tree @:layers | grep poky
>         160000 commit b33a8abe77081a2bdda0d89c61736473b2f9bb8b  poky
>
>         $ cat .gitmodules
>         ...
>         [submodule "yocto_poky"]
>                 path = layers/poky
>                 url = https://git.yoctoproject.org/git/poky
>                 branch = scarthgap
>
>         $ git submodule update --init --checkout --recursive --single-branch
>         ...
>         Cloning into '/home/uwe/work/sri/poet-server/layers/poky'...
>         remote: Enumerating objects: 8775, done.
>         remote: Counting objects: 100% (3119/3119), done.
>         remote: Compressing objects: 100% (158/158), done.
>         remote: Total 8775 (delta 2974), reused 2961 (delta 2961), pack-reused 5656 (from 1)
>         Receiving objects: 100% (8775/8775), 3.24 MiB | 15.45 MiB/s, done.
>         Resolving deltas: 100% (6158/6158), completed with 391 local objects.
>         From https://git.yoctoproject.org/git/poky
>          * branch                      b33a8abe77081a2bdda0d89c61736473b2f9bb8b -> FETCH_HEAD
>
> so far so good. But:

Is it? You've only cloned the HEAD from the origin:

       --single-branch, --no-single-branch
           This option is only valid for the update command. Clone only one
           branch during update: HEAD or one specified by --branch.

Perhaps you want to use --branch here, and _perhaps_ update --single-branch should default to submodule.<name>.branch ?

-- 
D. Ben Knoble