Re: [RFC/PATCH] ls-files: adding support for submodules

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 9, 2016, 23:01 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqh99o8ypm.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <1473458004-41460-1-git-send-email-bmwill@google.com>

Brandon Williams <bmwill@google.com> writes:

> Allow ls-files to recognize submodules in order to retrieve a list of
> files from a repository's submodules.  This is done by forking off a
> process to recursively call ls-files on all submodules.

While I see why "ls-files --recurse-submodules" sounds nice ("hey, I can get list of _all_ the files here"), and I am quite happy with the quality of implementation (not just the code but its documentation and test) especially from a first-time contributor, I am not quite sure what the utility of this new feature would be, especially given that the command is a plumbing, i.e. meant to be a useful building block for scripts.

If I get

	$ git ls-files --recurse-submodules
	Makefile
        lib/Makefile
        lib/hello.py
	main.py
	goodbye.py

out of the command, what can I do with it without knowing where the submodule boundaries are? It's not like I can just do

	git ls-files --recurse-submodule |
        while read path
        do
        	git update-index --add "$path"
	done

when "lib/" is a submodule. Instead, I'd need to go to "lib/" and then add "Makefile" and "hello.py" from there.

Show 17 quoted lines

> diff --git a/t/t3007-ls-files-recurse-submodules.sh b/t/t3007-ls-files-recurse-submodules.sh
> new file mode 100644
> index 0000000..78deded
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/t/t3007-ls-files-recurse-submodules.sh
> @@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
> +...
> +test_expect_success 'setup directory structure and submodules' '
> +...
> +'
> +
> +cat >expect <<EOF
> +.gitmodules
> +a
> +b/b
> +submodule/c
> +EOF

We used to do that when we didn't know better.

Please don't do things outside test_expect_* block, especially in a new script.