tracking a file from another project in my own project

Hello

Supposed I want to use the strbuf.c and strbuf.h file of git.git in my own project.git. Is it possible to configure git to track this particular files when I do a git pull?

This way all strbug bugs corrected in git.git will be apply automatically to my own project.

Thank you.

picca <picca@synchrotron-soleil.Fr> writes:

If I were you I'd probably just keep git.git as a submodule in your project and have two symlinks from your toplevel pointing at git.git/strbuf.[ch] (or from src/ to ../git.git/strbuf.[ch]).

Or "merge -s subtree".

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008 01:20:41 -0800 Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

So submodule is a requirement to achieved this comportment ?

If someone want to clone my project.git, must he also clone the git.git project or he loose the ability to follow by it's own the strbuf.[ch] file ?

I red the git help merge -s explanation but I do not understand how it can help in my case.

Thanks

Frederic

picca <picca@synchrotron-soleil.Fr> writes:

If you want to have strbuf.[ch] automatically tracked from git.git the you would have to have git.git project somehow embedded in your repository. Using submodules is one solution.

Currently there is no way to do "sparse checkout", i.e. automatically checkout only needed files (even if git.git clone has all the objects), but feel free to implement it... ;-) (just kidding).

Or you can try to convince strbuf authors to make it into separate
project, which would be fetched into git.git like gitk was.  And you
could then pull from this project directly or indirectly (submodule)
into your project.
  

True.

Using subtree merge strategy you can join histories of your project and git.git, embedding git.git as a subdirectory like gitk and git-gui are now in git.git. It is an alternative to using submodules.

Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:

[...]

Is subtree merge strategy documented?

$ grep subtree Documentation/merge-strategies.txt $

-- Sergei.

Sergei Organov wrote:

Documentation/howto/using-merge-subtree.txt

But I agree that it should be also described, or at least mentioned in Documentation/merge-strategies.txt