Selectively clone Git submodules -- a useful feature?

Hi,

AFAIK Git has two ways to clone a repository with respect to submodules:

(1) Plain clone of just the repository itself: git clone git://github.com/foo/bar.git

(2) Recursive clone of the repository including all its submodules: git clone --recursive git://github.com/foo/bar.git

I am working on a big cross platform project and on certain platforms I don't need certain submodules. AFAIK there is no way to selectively clone only a subset of the submodules with the standard command line interface. I wonder if something like an exclude pattern for submodules would be of general interest. I imagine a call like this after a plain "clone" operation:

git submodule update --init --recursive --exclude 3rdParty/Windows/*

or even:

git clone --recursive --exclude 3rdParty/Windows/* git://github.com/foo/bar.git

Please let me know what you think.

Thanks, Lars

PS: I posted this question already on the Google Git group here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/git-users/jyKsd45d2MA

I am sorry, but I discovered this mailing list afterwards and I am not sure which one is the appropriate one. Please advise.

--- https://larsxschneider.github.io/

Am 18.06.2015 um 22:55 schrieb Lars Schneider:

 > need certain submodules. AFAIK there is no way to selectively clone only a
 > subset of the submodules with the standard command line interface. I wonder

 > I imagine a call like this after a plain "clone" operation:

Git already supports that use case: Just set the "submodule.<name>.update" configuration to "none" for all submodules you aren't interested in and "git submodule update" will always skip them.

You can also set this config option globally:

git config --global submodule.<name>.update=none

That'll set the default for all repositories of the logged in user on this computer to not update submodule <name>.

git clone will be influenced by the global setting. If you just want to skip submodule <name> for a single clone you can do it like this:

   git -c submodule.<name>.update=none clone --recursive git://github.com/foo/bar.git

On Thu, Jun 18, 2015 at 1:55 PM, Lars Schneider <larsxschneider@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

sorry for a real late answer to this,

I am looking forward for exactly that feature, I even proposed exactly this (in form of RFC patches, see http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/281670)

I plan on reviving this soon. Did you solve this problem as Jens proposed or are you still looking for a solution?

Thanks, Stefan