On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 08:31:37AM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Stefan Beller <sbeller@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > So you propose to make git-add behave like "git submodule add" > > (i.e. also add the .gitmodules entry for name/path/URL), which I > > like from a submodule perspective. > > > > However other users of gitlinks might be confused[1], which is why > > I refrained from "making every gitlink into a submodule". Specifically > > the more powerful a submodule operation is (the more fluff adds), > > the harder it should be for people to mis-use it. > > A few questions that come to mind are: > > - Does "git add sub/" have enough information to populate > .gitmodules? If we have reasonable "default" values for > .gitmodules entries (e.g. missing URL means we won't fetch when > asked to go recursively fetch), perhaps we can leave everything > other than "submodule.$name.path" undefined. My suggestion would be: If we do not have them we do not populate them. We could even go further and say: If we do not have the set "git submodule add" would populate then we do not add anything to .gitmodules and warn the user. > - Can't we help those who have gitlinks without .gitmodules entries > exactly the same way as above, i.e. when we see a gitlink and try > to treat it as a submodule, we'd first try to look it up from > .gitmodules (by going from path to name and then to > submodule.$name.$var); the above "'git add sub/' would add an > entry for .gitmodules" wish is based on the assumption that there > are reasonable "default" values for each of these $var--so by > basing on the same assumption, we can "pretend" as if these > submodule.$name.$var were in .gitmodules file when we see > gitlinks without .gitmodules entries. IOW, if "git add sub/" can > add .gitmodules to help people without having to type "git > submodule add sub/", then we can give exactly the same degree of > help without even modifying .gitmodules when "git add sub/" is > run. This "default" value thing got me thinking in a different direction. We could use a scheme like that to get names (and values) for submodules that are missing from the .gitmodules file. If we decide that we need to handle them. Cheers Heiko
