From: D. Ben Knoble <ben.knoble@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 09 Mar 2026 22:14:33 GMT
Subject: Re: Option for "git submodule foreach" to also run on the parent git?
Message-ID: <CALnO6CCR1BioeC_eYCBt9BCrFS63L6f_5p2nTk=Z9eOAj3hW1A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <032a7767-2350-4312-a7b1-75080519c72a@nutanix.com>

On Mon, Mar 9, 2026 at 8:56 AM Florian Schmidt <flosch@nutanix.com> wrote:
>
> Hey everyone,
>
> would there be an appetite for a new option to "git submodule foreach"
> to run the foreach command on the parent git repo as well?
>
> I occasionally use "git submodule foreach", for example, to make dev
> branches on all the submodules if I expect to touch them all during a
> dev cycle. Even if I don't need them on all submodule, once I'm done
> with everything, I might run something like "git submodule foreach 'git
> branch -d <foo> || :'" for easy cleanup.
>
> In either case, I likely also want to run the same command on the parent
> git. That's easily achieved by just running it manually one more time,
> and I'm sure it's not hard to make a git alias for that either. But I
> wonder whether the workflow is common enough that there's interest in
> adding a command-line option for that? I'd be happy to have a look in
> that case.
>
> Also, tangentially related, "|| :" works, but what about a command line
> option to continue on non-zero return values and not abort?
>
> Cheers,
> Florian

This is not particularly general-purpose, but don't we have
submodule.recurse (-> switch, checkout) and
submodule.propagateBranches to make this kind of branching workflow
easier?

-- 
D. Ben Knoble