On Tue, Oct 18, 2016 at 12:35 PM, Robert Dailey
<rcdailey.lists@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hello git experts,
>
> I have in the past attempted to integrate submodules into my primary
> repository using the same directory name. However, this has always
> caused headache when going to and from branches that take you between
> when this integration occurred and when it didn't. It's a bit hard to
> explain. Basically, if I have a submodule "foo", and I delete that
> submodule and physically add its files under the same directory "foo",
> when I do a pull to get this change from another clone, it fails
> saying:
>
> error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten
> by checkout:
> foo/somefile.txt
> Please move or remove them before you switch branches.
> Aborting
> could not detach HEAD
>
>
> Obviously, git can't delete the submodule because the files have also
> been added directly. I don't think it is built to handle this
> scenario. Here is the series of commands I ran to "integrate" the
> submodule (replace the submodule with a directory containing the exact
> contents of the submodule itself):
>
> #!/usr/bin/env bash
> mv "$1" "${1}_"
> git submodule deinit "$1"
This removes the submodule entries from .git/config
(and it would remove the contents of that submodule, but they are moved)
> git rm "$1"
Removing the git link here.
So we still have the entries in the .gitmodules file there.
Maybe add:
name=$(git submodule-helper name $1)
git config -f .gitmodules --unset submodule.$name.*
git add .gitmodules
? (Could be optional)
> mv "${1}_" "$1"
> git add "$1/**"
Moving back into place and adding all files in there.
>
> The above script is named git-integrate-submodule, I run it like so:
>
> $ git integrate-submodule foo
>
> Then I do:
>
> $ git commit -m 'Integrated foo submodule'
>
> Is there any way to make this work nicely?
I think you can just remove the gitlink from the index and not from the working
tree ("git rm --cached $1")
> The only solution I've
> found is to obviously rename the directory before adding the physical
> files, for example name it foo1. Because they're different, they never
> "clash".
Also look at the difference between plumbing and porcelain commands[1],
as plumbing is more stable than the porcelain, so it will be easier to maintain
this script.
I think this would be an actually reasonable feature, which Git itself
could support via "git submodule [de]integrate", but then we'd also want
to see the reverse, i.e. take a sub directory and make it a submodule.
[1] e.g. https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/
Thanks,
Stefan