Re: Adding "--ignore-submodules" switch to git-describe

Francis Moreau [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

But when we ignore untracked paths in the superproject, we should
ignore untracked paths in submodule working trees consistently.

yes I agree.

But in the short term, could you suggest a method to workaround this
inconsistency ?

Hrm, ... didn't I already?

    As we do not take untracked content at the superproject level into
    account when deciding "--dirty"-ness, I think it is very sensible to
    either do one of the following:

     (1) always ignore untracked files in submodule working trees; or

     (2) if we were to introduce some form of --ignore-submodules,
         ignore untracked files in the superproject working tree when we
         use that mechanism to ignore untracked files in submodule
         working trees.

    Strictly speaking, (1) is a degenerate case of (2).

    ...
    I think what is missing from "--dirty" is not "--ignore-submodules",
    but "--do-not-ignore-untracked" option [*1*].  "describe --dirty"
    ignores untracked files in the superproject by default, and we
    should ignore untracked files in submodule working trees, but the
    current code does not.  Fixing that is (1) above.

I think the right first step without any new option is to make
"describe --dirty" to ignore the dirtiness in submodules coming
solely from having untracked files in submodules' working trees.

You could later add --having-untracked-is-dirty option to mark the
output dirty when there is an untracked file in submodules' working
trees or the toplevel working tree, which would be the second step.