Re: git submodules

From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 28, 2008, 22:26 UTC
Message-ID: <m3r69dtzm9.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <20080728220308.GF10409@artemis.madism.org>

Pierre Habouzit <madcoder@debian.org> writes:

> On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 09:40:22PM +0000, Avery Pennarun wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> > Further, if you don't have a separate .git directory for each
> > submodule, you can't *switch* branches on the submodule independently
> > of the supermodule in any obvious way.
> 
> Yes you can, in what I propose you have a dummy .git in each submodule,
> with probably an index, a HEAD and a config file (maybe some other
> things along) to allow that especially.

What you are (re)inventing here is something called gitlink (.git which is a file, or .gitlink file); not to be confused with 'sumbodule'/'commit' entry in a tree which is sometimes called gitlink. Alternate idea was 'unionfs' like "shadowing" .git, with 'core.gitdir' in .git/config (which would contain .git/HEAD and .git/index, and all missing files and config would be taken from `core.gitdir').

There was even some preliminary implementation IIRC, but AFAIR it was abandoned because of no "real usage".

See
  http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.msysgit/1868
  http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/72449
  http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/72457
  http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/72296

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git