Re: RFC: Making submodules "track" branches

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 23:09, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

Wouldn't it be enough to say --ignore-submodules for your day-to-day work,
without lying in the gitlink entry in the superproject tree?  An entry
"submodule.foo.branch = fred" in your .gitmodules will still tell your
local git to update the submodule worktree to work on 'fred' branch.  At
least, an arrangement like that would allow the build infrastructure to
use --no-ignore-submodules when running its equivalent of GIT-VERSION-GEN
to notice that what you are building is using something different from
what the superproject specified to use in the submodule, while not bugging
you with differences you do not care about (or you already know about and
are irrelevant to the change you are working on).

Yes I think that's even better, to have no entry in the superproject's
tree at all, and just a repo/branch pair in .gitmodules.

Less confusion and the same features.