Re: Nesting a submodule inside of another...

Jens Lehmann [off-list ref] writes:

... (at least when it concerns their work tree, the
gitfile effort is trying to introduce some superproject awareness).

I don't think so.

The "gitfile effort" just makes it more convenient and potentially safer
for superproject to remove submodule working tree by running an equivalent
of "rm -fr submodule". The submodule shouldn't even care where its .git
metadirectory is by looking at the "gitfile: " line, nor should it assume
that location its .git metadirectory moved out of its working tree has
some fixed relationship with its supermodule's repository.  E.g. the
superproject could choose to store it under $HOME/cache or /var/state as
long as it knows where to point it back to after it runs "rm -rf submodule"
and then it has to re-instantiate the submodule.

IOW, the superproject must be aware of that location, but submodule
shouldn't depend on what convention the superproject chose to use.
After all, there may not even be a superproject when gitfile is in use,
so running "test -f .git" and assuming that it is used as a submodule of
somebody else is already a bogus test.