Hi, Thadeus Fleming wrote: > I'm running git 2.14.2 on Ubuntu 16.04. > > Compare the behavior of > >> git clone --branch pu --depth 1 https://github.com/git/git git-pu > > which clones only the latest commit of the pu branch and Yes. >> mkdir tmp && cd tmp && git init >> git submodule add --branch pu --depth 1 https://github.com/git/git \ > git-pu > > which gives the error > > fatal: 'origin/pu' is not a commit and a branch 'pu' cannot be created from it > Unable to checkout submodule 'git-pu' As a side note (you are using "git submodule add --depth", not "git submodule update --depth"), I suspect that "submodule update --depth" may not always do what people expect. With add --depth, I agree with your expectation and after your fix everything should work fine. But with update --depth, consider the following sequence of steps: 1. I create a repository "super" with submodule "sub" and publish both. 2. I make a couple commits to "sub" and a commit to "super" making use of those changes and want to publish them. 3. I use "git push --recurse-submodules" to publish my commits to "sub" and "super": a. First it pushes to "sub". b. Then it pushes to "super". Between steps 3(a) and 3(b), a person can still "git clone --recurse-submodules" the "super" repository. The repository "super" does not have my change yet and "sub" does, but that is not a problem, since commands like "git checkout --recurse-submodules" and "git submodule update" know to check out the commit *before* my change in the submodule. But between steps 3(a) and 3(b), "git submodule update --depth=1" would not work. It would fetch the submodule with depth 1 and then try to check out a commit that is deeper in history. So I think there's more thinking needed there. That's all a tangent to your report about add --depth, though. Thanks, Jonathan
