Re: [RFC] What to you think about a loose status for submodules?

Heiko Voigt [off-list ref] writes:

Even though there has not been much more work on this item the idea has
become much clearer for me since the last discussion. Now that sparse
checkout is in master I would like to generalize this idea a little
further.

Selective init/update of submodules is a fundamental design element and
the presense of "sparse checkout" does not affect it.

In the remainder of your message

How about ...

you are talking about a change that would also apply to a project that
does not have submodules at all, and you would want to involve Nguyễn in
the discussion.

I have no strong opinion if attributes is the right vehicle to carry this
information, except for this part:

Does the current sparse implementation work with submodule entries as
well? Then it could be even more straightforward to implement than the
previous idea.

What the project ships as grouping suggestions to cloners is merely a
small part of the information on submodules (others such as URL and name
are already found in .gitmodules, and .gitmodules are designed to be
extensible by allowing other "config"-ish items in it).  Separating only
the grouping info into a different file (I don't particularly care if you
use .gitattributes or something else; as long as it is not .gitmodules,
the argument is the same) is not such a good idea.