Dealing with .gitmodules

[Antonio Ospite]

On Fri, 24 Mar 2017 11:12:38 +0100
martin f krafft <madduck at madduck.net> wrote:

> Hey,
> 
> The file .gitmodules (man 5 gitmodules, for use with git-submodule)
> is hardcoded to reside in $GIT_WORK_DIR/.gitmodules. As vcsh
> repositories all share the same work dir, there's a conflict.
> 
> Has anyone come up with a smart way to handle this?
>

I am picking up this old discussion, as submodules are indeed the most
"natural" way to deal with extensions or plugins. and this is IMHO the
main pain-point of using detached working trees.

An interesting approach to overcome the limitation of the
hardcoded .gitmodules path is vcsh-modules:
https://github.com/lierdakil/vcsh-modules

It basically "redirects" operations on $GIT_WORK_TREE/.gitmodules to
$GIT_WORK_TREE/.gitmodules.d/$VCSH_REPO_NAME

A more robust solution could be to teach git how to set a custom path
for the gitmodules file.

I have an experimental patch for that I am thinking about proposing it
to git developers. My idea is to have a core.submodulesFile config
setting in git, which vcsh could set when operating on a repo.

Any comments?

If anyone is interested I can CC them (or the list?) when I write to the
git mailing list.

Ciao,
   Antonio

-- 
Antonio Ospite
https://ao2.it
https://twitter.com/ao2it

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