The documentation refers to "initialized" or "populated" submodules, to explain which submodules are affected by '--recurse-submodules', but the real terminology here is 'active' submodules. Update the documentation accordingly. Some terminology: - Active is defined in gitsubmodules(7), it only involves the configuration variables 'submodule.active', 'submodule.<name>.active' and 'submodule.<name>.url'. The function submodule.c::is_submodule_active checks that a submodule is active. - Populated means that the submodule's working tree is present (and the gitfile correctly points to the submodule repository), i.e. either the superproject was cloned with ` --recurse-submodules`, or the user ran `git submodule update --init`, or `git submodule init [<path>]` and `git submodule update [<path>]` separately which populated the submodule working tree. This does not involve the 3 configuration variables above. - Initialized (at least in the context of the man pages involved in this patch) means both "populated" and "active" as defined above, i.e. what `git submodule update --init` does. The --recurse-submodules option mostly affects active submodules. An exception is `git fetch` where the option affects populated submodules. As a consequence, in `git pull --recurse-submodules` the fetch affects populated submodules, but the resulting working tree update only affects active submodules. In the documentation of `git-pull`, let's distinguish between the fetching part which affects populated submodules, and the updating of worktrees, which only affects active submodules. Signed-off-by: Damien Robert <damien.olivier.robert+git@xxxxxxxxx> Helped-by: Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@xxxxxxxxx> --- Documentation/git-checkout.txt | 2 +- Documentation/git-grep.txt | 2 +- Documentation/git-ls-files.txt | 2 +- Documentation/git-pull.txt | 6 ++++-- Documentation/git-read-tree.txt | 2 +- Documentation/git-switch.txt | 2 +- 6 files changed, 9 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/git-checkout.txt b/Documentation/git-checkout.txt index 140bd3eabb..5b697eee1b 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-checkout.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-checkout.txt @@ -292,7 +292,7 @@ Note that this option uses the no overlay mode by default (see also --recurse-submodules:: --no-recurse-submodules:: - Using `--recurse-submodules` will update the content of all initialized + Using `--recurse-submodules` will update the content of all active submodules according to the commit recorded in the superproject. If local modifications in a submodule would be overwritten the checkout will fail unless `-f` is used. If nothing (or `--no-recurse-submodules`) diff --git a/Documentation/git-grep.txt b/Documentation/git-grep.txt index ddb6acc025..cdf8e26b47 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-grep.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-grep.txt @@ -93,7 +93,7 @@ OPTIONS with `--no-index`. --recurse-submodules:: - Recursively search in each submodule that has been initialized and + Recursively search in each submodule that is active and checked out in the repository. When used in combination with the <tree> option the prefix of all submodule output will be the name of the parent project's <tree> object. This option has no effect diff --git a/Documentation/git-ls-files.txt b/Documentation/git-ls-files.txt index 8461c0e83e..3cb2ebb438 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-ls-files.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-ls-files.txt @@ -148,7 +148,7 @@ a space) at the start of each line: top directory. --recurse-submodules:: - Recursively calls ls-files on each submodule in the repository. + Recursively calls ls-files on each active submodule in the repository. Currently there is only support for the --cached mode. --abbrev[=<n>]:: diff --git a/Documentation/git-pull.txt b/Documentation/git-pull.txt index 47bc4a7061..b336df00c7 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-pull.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-pull.txt @@ -85,8 +85,10 @@ OPTIONS Pass --verbose to git-fetch and git-merge. --[no-]recurse-submodules[=yes|on-demand|no]:: - This option controls if new commits of all populated submodules should - be fetched and updated, too (see linkgit:git-fetch[1], linkgit:git-config[1] and linkgit:gitmodules[5]). + This option controls if new commits of populated submodules should + be fetched, and if the working trees of active submodules should be + updated, too (see linkgit:git-fetch[1], linkgit:git-config[1] and + linkgit:gitmodules[5]). + If the checkout is done via rebase, local submodule commits are rebased as well. + diff --git a/Documentation/git-read-tree.txt b/Documentation/git-read-tree.txt index 807cad4691..a2350994ee 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-read-tree.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-read-tree.txt @@ -116,7 +116,7 @@ OPTIONS located in. --[no-]recurse-submodules:: - Using --recurse-submodules will update the content of all initialized + Using --recurse-submodules will update the content of all active submodules according to the commit recorded in the superproject by calling read-tree recursively, also setting the submodules' HEADs to be detached at that commit. diff --git a/Documentation/git-switch.txt b/Documentation/git-switch.txt index 79dbc9624d..3759c3a265 100644 --- a/Documentation/git-switch.txt +++ b/Documentation/git-switch.txt @@ -181,7 +181,7 @@ name, the guessing is aborted. You can explicitly give a name with --recurse-submodules:: --no-recurse-submodules:: Using `--recurse-submodules` will update the content of all - initialized submodules according to the commit recorded in the + active submodules according to the commit recorded in the superproject. If nothing (or `--no-recurse-submodules`) is used, submodules working trees will not be updated. Just like linkgit:git-submodule[1], this will detach `HEAD` of the -- Patched on top of v2.26.0 (git version 2.25.2)