Re: [PATCH v9 0/3] teach submodules to know they're submodules

Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason [off-list ref] writes:

But now it's a boolean indicating "it's there, discover it", and the
implied (but not really explicitly stated) reason in 2/3 is that it's
purely for optimization purposes at this point.

You may know that I have a separate checkout of the 'todo' branch at
path "Meta" in my working tree.

I could use the hasSuperproject=false setting there, to say "this is
*NOT* a submodule, even the parent directory is a working tree of a
different repository, it is not our superproject, so do *NOT* bother
to go up to discover anything".

If that configuration weren't there in the "Meta/.git/config", the
parent directory of "Meta" (which has its own ".git") cannot tell if
that "Meta" thing is a submodule being prepared that hasn't been
added yet, or it will never intended to be a submodule.  I would
imagine that "git add X" can later be taught to refuse to add X if
there is X/.git and X/.git/config says it explicitly says that it
does not have a superproject.

So, I am not sure if it is a good characterization that it is for
optimization at all.