Re: [PATCH 1/2] clone: Fix error message for reference repository

At 08:30 -0700 08 Apr 2013, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

You switch to a version of the superproject with a plain file at
dirA/ or there is nothing at dirA.  The checkout will fail and you
need to manually rectify the situation [*1*], but after that is
done, you do not have any repository at /path/to/super/dirA/.git
anymore.

That was the reason why I recommended against the practice.

So you're essentially saying you don't want to support using a new-world 
submodule as a reference because using an old-world submodule as such is 
likely to be problematic?  Even though the type of submodule that is 
actually likely to cause problems would currently be accepted as a 
reference repository?  That seems somewhat perverse to me.

Also, nothing in this series is strictly about submodules; that just 
happens to be what I was working with when I noticed the issue.  It 
would apply to any repository created with --separate-git-dir, although 
submodules are likely to be the most common occurrence by far.

So you are right that we do not remove in the new world order, but
then --reference can be given to point at the real location ;-)

Yes, that's definitely a possibility.  But I think that the location of 
the work tree for a repository is much more likely to come to a user's 
mind than the location of a non-bare repository.  Especially when 
dealing with submodules where the repository location was decided for 
the user, and is somewhat of an implementation detail that the user 
shouldn't need to care about.