Re: [RFC PATCH v2 06/12] submodule--helper: add a '--stage' option to the 'config' sub command

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 6, 2018, 17:38 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq7el3pf8z.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <20180806125828.66fc99ef0b118e26e0b3e60d@ao2.it>

Antonio Ospite <ao2@ao2.it> writes:

Show 12 quoted lines

>> I also do not see a reason why we want to stop referring to
>> .gitmodules explicitly by name.  We do not hide the fact that
>> in-tree .gitignore and .gitattributes files are used to hold the
>> metainformation about the project tree, saying that it is an
>> implementation detail.  Is there a good reason why .gitmodules
>> should be different from these other two?
>
> Not sure about that, but one difference I can see
> between .gitignore/.gitattributes and .gitmodules is that I got the
> impression that editing the latter by hand is strongly discouraged, if
> that is indeed the case a layer of indirection can make sense IMHO to
> make the actual file path less relevant.

I do not think we discourage hand editing of .gitmodules more than others, say .gitignore; and I do not see a sane reason to do so.

"If you commit broken .gitmodules and let another person clone it, submodules will not be checked out correctly" is *not* a sane reason, as exactly the same thing can be said for incorrect checkout of files with broken .gitattributes.

Quite honestly, I just want to get over with this minor detail that won't help any scripts (after all submodule--helper is not meant to be used by humans) and focus on other parts of the patch series.