Re: [BUG] `git reset --hard` fails with `update = none` submodules

Actually, nevermind that last comment. I misunderstood what `git
submodule init` does. I thought it cloned missing submodules, but
apparently that's done by `git submodule update`, so the behavior does
make sense.

On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 6:39 PM Rose Kunkel [off-list ref] wrote:

That sounds reasonable to me.

I do think it's pretty unintuitive that `update = none` means that
submodules never get initialized, even with an explicit `git submodule
init` command. If this is intended behavior, it should be better
documented. If not, fixing that would also fix this bug.

On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 6:25 PM brian m. carlson
[off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On 2021-06-16 at 01:03:40, Rose Kunkel wrote:

quoted

Potentially relevant: `git config --global --list` shows

status.showstash=true
status.submodulesummary=true
submodule.recurse=true

Thanks for this additional information.  This line is the critical
piece.  Now I get this:

  $ git reset --hard
  fatal: not a git repository: ../../.git/modules/repos/agda
  fatal: could not reset submodule index

Predictably, "git -c submodules.recurse=true reset --hard" also results
in the same thing.

The --recurse-submodules option for git reset says this (emphasis mine):

  When the working tree is updated, using --recurse-submodules will also
  recursively reset the working tree of all *active* submodules
  according to the commit recorded in the superproject, also setting the
  submodules' HEAD to be detached at that commit.

On my system, .git/config has this:

  [submodule]
          active = .

So these submodules are active, but they probably should not be, since
we haven't checked anything out (or, for that matter, cloned any data)
and it wouldn't make sense to try to operate on them automatically with
submodules.recurse or --recurse-submodules.

My gut tells me that we should probably mark submodules with update=none
set on a clone as inactive.  Of course, this is a tricky area that I'm
not super familiar with, so opinions or thoughts are welcome.

If folks think this is a good way forward, I'll look into writing a
patch, probably tomorrow evening since it's starting to get late here.
--
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Toronto, Ontario, CA