Linus Torvalds wrote: > On Sun, 3 Dec 2006, Sven Verdoolaege wrote: >> >> On Fri, Dec 01, 2006 at 03:30:32PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: >>> The only thing that a submodule must NOT be allowed to do on its own is >>> pruning (and it's distant cousin "git repack -d"). >> >> How are you going to enforce this if the submodule isn't supposed >> to know that it is being used as a submodule ? > > Note that there's actually two "submodules": > > - there's the submodule "project" itself. > > This one must be totally unaware of the supermodule, because this one > might be cloned and copied _independently_ of the supermodule. > > - there's the PARTICULAR CHECKED-OUT COPY of the submodule that is > actually checked out in a supermodule. > > This is just a specific _instance_ of the particular submodule. > > So a particular instance of a submodule might be "aware" of the fact that > it's a submodule of a supermodule. For example, the "awareness" migth be > as simple as just a magic flag file inside it's .git/ directory. And that > awareness would be what simply disabled pruning or "repack -d" within that > particular instance. If we use objects/info/alternates (or equivalent, e.g. objects/info/modules, or modules file) in superproject to refer to submodule repository object database (so superproject has access to all the objects including submodule), I'd prefer to have in submodule objects/info/borrowers file, which would point to superproject (and to other repositories which have submodule as one of alternate object databases) for git-prune and friends to check which parts are truly unreachable. This would be generic solution to the problem with alternates, not only specific to submodule support. -- Jakub Narebski Warsaw, Poland ShadeHawk on #git - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html