Re: [PATCHv2 0/6] git clone: Marry --recursive and --reference

Stefan Beller [off-list ref] writes:

The way I understood and implemented it is

    here is a path, try to use it as an alternate; if that is not
    an alternate, it's fine too; maybe warn about it, but carry
    on with the operation.

My expectation is without "maybe warn about it".  And not adding it
as an alternate (because it is not usable) is just "doing as I was
told to do", nothing noteworthy.  Because "do it only if you can" is
an explicit instruction to the doer that the caller does not care
about the outcome, I'd think there shouldn't be any warning, whether
it is used or not.  At the same time, if the caller wants to know
the outcome, and using if-able as a way to say "I prefer to see it
happen, but you do not have to panic if you can't", I'd think it is
OK to give "info:" to report which of the two possible paths was
taken in either case.  Throwing a "warning:" only when it didn't do
so does not make much sense to me.

The way you write this response I think you have a slightly
different understanding of what the -if-able ought to do?

    When --reference is given, only the superproject should
    borrow and the -if-able, may allow submodules to also borrow?

I have no idea what this sentence means.

quoted

I have a very strong opinion what should happen when the end-user
facing command is "git submodule", but if I have to choose, I would
prefer to see "git submodule update" tell what it did with "info:"
either case, i.e. "info: borrowing from ... because the superproject
borrows from there", and "info: not borrowing from ... even though
the superproject borrows from there".

I see. This way the user is most informed.

Yes, and if we were to go that route, "clone" without "-v" should
not report which of the two it took.  It is OK for "submodule" to
look at what "clone" left as the result and do more intelligent
reporting that is better suited for the context of the command.

The current implementation
of "submodule update --init" for start from scratch yields for example:

Submodule 'foo' (<url>) registered for path 'foo'
Submodule 'hooks' (<url>) registered for path 'hooks'
Cloning into '/home/sbeller/super/foo'...
Cloning into '/home/sbeller/super/hooks'...
warning: Not using proposed alternate
/home/sbeller/super-reference/.git/modules/hooks/
Submodule path 'foo': checked out '7b41f3a413b46140b050ae5324cbbcdd467d2b3a'
Submodule path 'hooks': checked out '3acc14d10d26678eae6489038fe0d4dad644a9b4'

so before this series we had 3 lines per submodule, and with this series
we get a 4th line for the unusual case.

You would prefer to see always 4 lines per submodule?

If the user says "--recursive --reference", then the user probably
deserves to be notified.  As I said (eh, rather, as I wanted to say
but failed to say so), I do not have a strong preference either way.