Re: [PATCH] git-submodule add: Record branch name in .gitmodules

On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 10:36:44PM +0200, Jens Lehmann wrote:

Except recording the branch name might raise expectations about what git
will do with it. And as far as this patch goes, git won't do anything
with it (yet).

As Phil pointed out, doing anything with this variable is ambiguous:

On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 06:03:53PM -0400, Phil Hord wrote:

Some projects now use the 'branch' config value to record the tracking
branch for the submodule.  Some ascribe different meaning to the
configuration if the value is given vs. undefined.  For example, see
the Gerrit submodule-subscription mechanism.  This change will cause
those workflows to behave differently than they do now.

On Tue, Oct 23, 2012 at 10:36:44PM +0200, Jens Lehmann wrote:

But I'd rather see a patch series properly implementing the always-tip
mode Ævar mentions in f030c96d86 (and which is requested by some users),
especially the interesting parts: What should git record as commit in
that case and how are "git status" and "git diff" going to handle
submodules which shall follow a specific branch. I assume "git submodule
update" is the right point in time to fetch that branch again and check
out a newer branch tip if necessary, but should that commit be added to
the superproject for that submodule automagically or not? This patch
falls short of this, as it does the easy part but not the interesting
ones ;-)

I agree that I'm not working on always-tip.  I'm just making that
easier.  For people that aren't interested in always-tip submodules
(e.g. Gerrit folks), this patch is still useful.  It would certainly
be possible to build an always-tip implementation on top of
submodule.$name.branch (as Ævar's one-liner does), but that would be
another patch series.

Personally, I think truly updates should be made explicitly, with a
hand written commit message about why the updates are occuring.  I
also think that setting up and running auto-updates should be easy
one-liners, not long, complicated ones ;).

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