Re: [RFC] Submodules in GIT

From: Daniel Barkalow <barkalow@iabervon.org>
Date: Nov 28, 2006, 20:41 UTC
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0611281407370.20138@iabervon.org>
In-Reply-To: <20061128190618.GB12463MdfPADPa@greensroom.kotnet.org>

On Tue, 28 Nov 2006, Sven Verdoolaege wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 01:37:54PM -0500, Daniel Barkalow wrote:
> > If submodule was the only thing that got changed, it's not dirty; if it 
> > were dirty, some of its contents would also have gotten changed.
> 
> For me, the commit is the only "content" of the subproject that the
> superproject should care about, so the submodule being dirty or not
> is completely irrelevant (for committing), but it seems you see the
> subproject more as a (working) tree than as a commit.

I think we agree on the tree/commit/object database model part.

I think we disagree on how the working *directories* relate. I see the checked-out state of a submodule as being relevant to the checked-out state of the supermodule, such that dirty state in the submodule directory is dirty state in the supermodule directory.

Show 7 quoted lines

> > Surely:
> > 
> > "git commit submodule/foo bar"
> 
> I wouldn't dream of doing such an operation, because it doesn't make
> sense to me.  (So as far as I'm concerned, you can make it do whatever
> you'd like it to do.)  You can only commit the subproject as a whole.

I'm thinking that users of subprojects will often want to work on the subprojects rather than exclusively using commits prepared by other people, and it's too much trouble to have to do the work in a repository for just the subproject and pull it into the superproject's submodule to test it. So the submodule working directory needs to function as a working directory for the subproject. Then

  "cd submodule; git commit foo"

does the obvious thing, but that should be the same as

  "git commit submodule/foo" (since it normally is)

and then it makes sense to let you do multiple commits with a single command when the paths end in different modules, since that's obviously what you're requesting, and then -a must do all of them.

	-Daniel