Hi Junio, Thank you for your feedback! On Mon, Aug 9, 2021 at 2:15 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > "Mahi Kolla via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > From: Mahi Kolla <mahikolla@xxxxxxxxxx> > > > > When running 'git clone --recurse-submodules', developers might expect various other commands such as 'pull' and 'checkout' to also run recursively into submodules. Set 'submodule.recurse' to true when 'git clone' is run with '--recurse-submodules'. > > Please wrap overlong lines in your proposed log message to say 70 or > so columns. > Ah, my bad, will do so going forward. > Some developers might expect, but wouldn't some others want to see > this not set to true, but want to recurse only into some but not all > submodules? > I definitely agree with this. Currently, the `--recurse-submodules` option takes in 1 parameter, a pathspec to the submodule they would like to initialize. `submodule.active` stores this path or `.` if no path is specified. Accordingly, `submodule.recurse=true` will only apply to the submodules specified by the user in `submodule.active`. This way users can ensure commands are run recursively only in submodules they have listed as active. > Is it possible to avoid changing the behaviour unconditionally and > potentially breaking existing users by making it an opt-in feature, > e.g. "git clone --recurse-submodules" would work as the current > users would expect, while "git clone --recurse-submodules=sticky" > would set submodule.recurse to true, or something? As mentioned, the `submodule.recurse=true` will only apply to active submodules specified by the user. Setting this config value when the user runs their initial `git clone` minimizes the number of times a developer must use the `--recurse-submodule` option on other commands. However, this is a behavior change that may be surprising for developers. To ensure a smooth rollout and easy adoption, I think adding a message using an `advice.*` config setting would be useful. When a user runs `git clone --recurse-submodules` an advice message will pop up alerting them `submodule.recurse=true`, what this means for other commands' functionality, and how to change it back (`git -C dst-dir config submodule.recurse false`). This also gives the user the option to turn off the advice message if they don't need it. I'll also update the appropriate documentation to better explain how setting submodule.recurse=true effects workflow. Let me know what you think! Best, Mahi Kolla
