Re: Why does 'submodule add' stage the relevant portions?

[Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>]

Jens Lehmann wrote:
> Am 24.03.2013 18:38, schrieb Ramkumar Ramachandra:
>> I find this behavior very inconsistent and annoying.  Why would I want
>> to commit the submodule change immediately?  Maybe I want to batch it
>> up with other changes and stage it at a later time.  Why should I have
>> to unstage them manually now?  I get the other side of the argument:
>> what if the user commits the .gitmodule change at a different time
>> from the file change?  In other words, the user should have a way of
>> saying 'submodule stage' and 'submodule unstage'.
>
> Hmm, AFAIK you are the first to bring up such a feature, as in most
> use cases doing a "git (submodule) add <path>" is expected to stage
> what you added.

In my opinion, the 'git submodule add <path>' form is broken, because
it doesn't relocate the object store of the submodule repository (a
bug that we need to fix?).  I always use the 'git submodule add
<repository> <path>' form, which puts the object store of the
submodule repository in .git/modules of the parent repository.  This
form is nothing like 'git add', but more like a 'git clone': arguably,
'submodule clone' is a better name for it.

> Maybe you could teach the stage/unstage code to also
> stage/unstage the corresponding part of the .gitmodules file, but
> I'm not sure it is worth the hassle.

Maybe not.  I'm still not an heavy user of submodules; I notice many
breakages and inconsistencies, but I'm not sure what to fix first, and
how to go about fixing it.  I'm yet to look at git-subtree and draw
inspiration from its design.

Maybe the WTF "You need to run this command from the toplevel of the
working tree" needs to be fixed first?  I think it's a matter of a
simple pushd, popd before the operation and building the correct
relative path.  I'm not sure how it'll work with nested submodules
though.  Then again, I think nested submodules are Wrong; submodules
are probably not the right tool for the job.

>> Now, for the implementation.  Do we have existing infrastructure to
>> stage a hunk non-interactively?  (The ability to select a hunk to
>> stage/ unstage programmatically).  If not, it might be quite a
>> non-trivial thing to write.
>
> Have fun when adding two submodules and unstage only one of them
> later. I think this feature will not work unless you analyze
> .gitmodules and stage/unstage section-wise.

Yes, which is why I asked if we have existing infrastructure to make
this possible.