From: "Stefan Beller" <sbeller@xxxxxxxxxx>
On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 10:35 AM, Philip Oakley <philipoakley@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
From: "Stefan Beller" <sbeller@xxxxxxxxxx>
On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 7:36 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Stefan Beller <sbeller@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
On Thu, May 21, 2015 at 1:03 PM, Philip Oakley
<philipoakley@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
+Submodules are not to be confused with remotes, which are meant
+mainly for branches of the same project;
This use of 'branches' didn't work for me. "remotes are meant
mainly
for
branches of the same project" ?
The "branch" in the original is used in a much wider sense than
usual branch (i.e. ref/heads/ thing you have locally); it refers to
forks of the same project but with a bit of twist. When you say
repository A is a fork of the same project as my local repository,
you would give an impression that A is not the authoritative copy
of
the project. But you can say my repository and that repository A
are branches of the same project, you give zero information as to
A's authoritativeness.
While this is correct, I think it is also confusing, because
'branch'
is a command which deals with local branches only in my perception
To deal with remote branches you need to use the commands
{remote, fetch, pull}.
So when someone mentions "branch" I need to think of local
operations
in one repository and not on different distributed histories.
If we are having difficulties defining a "remote" here (its not
defined in
gitglossary.txt anyway),
Now that we have a discussion on what remotes are, I'll send a patch
for that
as well.
why not simply put a full stop (period) after the
"Submodules are not to be confused with remotes.", and bypass the
problem,
avoiding digging the hole deeper.
I think we should dig deeper and point out the differences as it may
not be clear what
the differences are for new comers. Not digging deeper sounds to me
like saying
'git frotz' is not to be confused with 'git bar' FULL STOP AND I
WONT TELL YOU WHY!
Hi Stefan,
This was more of a case of "simply a full stop, 'cos I can't easily tell
you why" ;-). I've seen too many work situations (*) where colleagues
just dig deeper when they should stop digging, hence the note. It may be
that the style of reason could be changed. This is the final
introductory paragraph and was being pushed down partly because of this
problem (explaining things by saying what its not).
(*) The usual phrase in a report would be "A moments thought will show
that ..." for those concepts that would take two pages to explain and
would still be misunderstood by the unthinking folks.
That all said, if a nice well understood explanatory phrase can be found
then I'm all for it.
which is not helpful. (Why is the documentation pointing out there is
a difference to
that other command/concept, but not saying what is different?)
Submodules should not be confused with remote repositories,
which
are
meant to track the same repository, just at another location;
...
I do not think this is a great improvement. You now conflated
"repository" to mean "project" in the latter half of the sentence,
while you are trying to explain what a "remote repository" is.
That's true.
Your copy of git.git is not the same repository as mine; they have
different histories. Both repositories are used to work on the
same
project. "submoules are not remotes, which are other repositories
of the same project", perhaps?
That makes sense.
If maybe that the feature we should pick on is the common root of the
development between the local and remote repository, and quite
distinct for
the submodule. This allows remotes to be on the same machine, as well
as
distant machines and server.
I don't think this is actually true for all remotes. Think of shallow
clones
(they have no root or a different root) or even subtrees which are
pulled
in via a remotes?
I'd avoided mentioning that potential explanation mud-hole on the same
basis that it would be hard.
The main thing about remotes is "not being here" (as in "part of this
repository". As you point out it can be nearby in the local fs or even
on
another machine, or in the cloud)
It is I believe technically possible to have a submodule which is its
own
super project, with and without recursion, but would be very
atypical, and
would belong in the 'don't do that' category
regards
Philip
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