Re: [PATCH] Submodules always use a relative path to gitdir

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

...
And the extent of the design of

    echo "gitdir: $there" >.git && git config core.worktree "$(pwd)"

is to work with the locations of these two places as they are set up.
Moving one or the other or both may or may not work without adjusting to
what you did. If you "mv $there $newlocation" (the repository) behind
Git's back, you may need to update .git to point at the new location of
the repository.  If you move your working tree woth "mv", you may need to
update core.worktree to point at the new location of the working tree.
And until you do so things may not work. That is why we do not explicitly
say "you can move them to arbitrary places without telling git and things
will work"---because that is not the case.

Just to avoid any misunderstanding, I still agree with the overall goal of
the original patch to allow moving the whole superproject tree, including
its submodule repositories in its .git/modules/, and the working trees of
itself and its submodules. It is a narrow special case with a very well
defined relative relationships between the working tree of submodules and
the repositories that control them, and having them point to each other
with relative paths will make any post-move adjustments unnecessary, unlike
more general unconstrained uses of the "gitdir: $there" mechanism.