Re: git submodule remove?

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 1:41 PM, Tim Henigan[off-list ref] wrote:

Hello,

I recently encountered a situation where a user wanted to remove a submodule
from a repository.  Searching the mail archive, I found this thread
[1], but it does
not appear that it was ever followed up.

The Git Submodule Tutorial [2] has instructions for removing submodules, but it
seems natural to teach git how to "submodule rm".

This change would require git-submodule.sh to:
   1. Modify the .gitmodules file (remove the entry for the submodule).
   2. Modify the .git/config file (remove the entry for the submodule).
   3. Delete the newly untracked files.

Submodules are tracked by the tree.  You'll need to 'rm -rf' the
submodule, and then 'git rm' the folder to remove it.

Another option to consider would be a "submodule rm --cached" option which would
keep the newly untracked files.  However, with this option, I believe
it should still
descend into the submodule directory to remove the leftover submodule
".git" folder.

Is there another way of doing this?  If not, does this sound like a
reasonable change?

I can think of the only opposition being how blatantly dangerous it
would be. You're creating a command that will nuke the whole
repository, along with any unpushed changes.  There's potential there
for someone to seriously injure themselves without realizing it.

There's also the issue of once you delete a submodule... now what?
Git won't automatically remove them from other repositories when the
change gets pulled.  The folder will show up as untracked.  So far the
current paradigm with git submodules is git is very "hands off" and
leaves as much as possible to you. I think we would have to see a
change in thought consistently around how to approach submodules
before git implements anything of this sort.