Thanks Jeff You are completely right! It works as I expect if I remember the extra parameter `--recursive` when doing `git submodule update --init --recursive` Thanks a lot for your feedback! This is really useful! I learned a useful thing today :) /Jesper On Thu, Mar 7, 2019 at 7:08 PM Jeff King <peff@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > 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 -- Jesper Rønn-Jensen Nine A/S Mobile: +45 2989 1822 Blog http://justaddwater.dk/ jesperrr@xxxxxxxxx (Private e-mail and Google Talk IM)
