Re: url.<base>.insteadOf vs. submodules

Stefan Beller [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

This is true even without any submodules.  The Git project itself
does not even care you are Stefan, but you still can and do add
[user] name = "Stefan Beller" to .git/config of your clone of the
Git project.  A clone of the project may want to know more than the
data project itself keeps track of to describe the context in which
the particular clone is being used.  And .git/config is a good place
to keep such pieces of information.

This analogy is less clear to me than the kernel& appliance.
When applying it to you (user.name=Junio) that has write powers
over the blessed repository, the project cares a lot about you. ;)

The name that is recorded in the project history "Stefan Beller"
matters and the project cares about it, when the commit created in
that repository is pulled (or exported and imported via the e-mail
to "git am" route).  But what name you have configured in your
repository's .git/config, or the presense of your particular
repository for that matter, is much less significant (and that
applies to my primary working area as well).  The point is that the
project and a particular clone of it are entities at conceptually
different levels.

quoted

So I would think it is entirely reasonable if "git submodule init
sub" that is run in the superproject to initialize "sub" writes
something in "sub/.git" to tell that "sub" is used in the context of
that particular toplevel superproject and customize its behavour
accordingly.  Perhaps it may want to add the url.*.insteadOf that is
useful for updating the submodule repository when it does "submodule
init", for example.

Do we want to invent a special value for url.*.insteadOf to mean
  "look up in superproject, so I don't have to keep
  a copy that may get stale" ?

My gut feeling is that we should do the selective/filtered include
Peff mentioned when a repository is known to be used as a submodule
of somebody else.

So, like, Junio C Hamano said:

Stefan Beller [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Do we want to invent a special value for url.*.insteadOf to mean
  "look up in superproject, so I don't have to keep
  a copy that may get stale" ?

My gut feeling is that we should do the selective/filtered include
Peff mentioned when a repository is known to be used as a submodule
of somebody else.

Does the management of these submodue-related config values
become easier if, instead of placing them in .config, we
place them in a git/.context file?

jdl