Dealing with .gitmodules

[Antonio Ospite]

On Thu, 5 Apr 2018 13:51:45 +0200
Antonio Ospite <ao2 at ao2.it> wrote:

> 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.
> 

Hi,

the changes I proposed to git developers have been accepted:
https://public-inbox.org/git/20181025161813.17252-1-ao2@ao2.it/

And since version 2.20.0 git is able to use .gitmodules even when the
file is not in the working tree.

Combining this with the sparse-checkout functionality it is now
possible to use submodules with "vcsh run" with a setup like the one
here: https://git.ao2.it/config/vcsh.git/

I tried to recap the whole story behind vcsh and submodules here:
https://git.ao2.it/config/vcsh.git/commitdiff/6eede8729318d0419b32c0d9424297889a8e57b0

What I forgot to tell in that commit message is that "vcsh enter <repo>"
was already working even with older git version as long as .gitmodules
was ignored in the sparse-checkout config.

The new git version enables the use of "vcsh run <repo> <command>" and
per-repository hooks with submodules.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to ask.

Ciao,
   Antonio

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

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