On Thu, Mar 07, 2019 at 12:07:21PM +0100, Jesper Rønn-Jensen wrote: > Hi I think I may have found an error in the way git handles a > submodule's submodule. Read further for the example (extracted from a > real project). First off, thank you for the example script. It made understanding what's going on so much easier. :) > * I have a main repository which has some submodules defined. > * One of the submodules is a common submodule which is also included > in one of the other submodules > * When running `git fetch --recurse-submodules` I get an error. I think the presence of common_submodule in the main repo is actually a red herring. if you remove the last two lines of this stanza: > git setup main_repos > pushd main_repos > git submodule add ../common_submodule > git commit -m 'added submodule to main_repos' the outcome is the same. > # This line fails with error code 1 "Could not access submodule > 'common_submodule'" > git fetch --recurse-submodules It looks like "fetch" is smart enough to initialize a submodule when necessary, but not smart enough to do so recursively. If I replace that line with: git submodule update --init --recursive then it works as I'd expect. Likewise, cloning the repository with: git clone --recurse-submodules main_repos foo does what you'd want. After that, I think "git fetch --recurse-submodules" does what you want, because the submodule repository is already initialized. I'm not sure to what degree git-fetch intended to support initializing submodules. But it certainly seems like a bug that it handles the top layer but does not recurse (i.e., it should either handle all or none). Hopefully the commands above at least give you a workaround. -Peff
