On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 04:04:42PM +0100, Heiko Voigt wrote:
> > On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 01:44:37PM -0500, W. Trevor King wrote:
> > >   $ git submodule pull-branch
> > 
> > I think "floating submodules" is a misleading name for this feature
> > though, since the checkout SHA is explicitly specified.  We're just
> > making it more convenient to explicitly update the SHA.  How about
> > "tracking submodules"?
> 
> Until now we have always called this workflow floating submodules. I
> imaging since the submodule floats to the newest revision (whatever the
> user chooses that to be) instead of staying at the recorded sha1.
> 
> "tracking submodules" sounds strange to me since the term tracked in git
> is mainly used in combination with exact recorded history (e.g. tracking
> branch). Since it is about *not* checking out the recorded sha1 but
> something that can change I think that could cause confusion.
> 
> I think floating is a more unambiguous term and already known on the
> list.

I had been getting the impression that floating submodules would
automatically update without explicit user intervention.  After
re-reading your initial floating submodules post, it looks like we do
match up after the mapping:

  Git        Heiko               Trevor
  ---------  -----------------   -------------
  update     update --checkout   update
             update              update --pull

So I'll go back to "floating" ;).

On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 04:30:07PM +0100, Heiko Voigt wrote:
> > >  (2) "git diff [$path]" and friends in the superproject compares the
> > >      HEAD of the checkout of the submodule at $path with the tip of
> > >      the branch named by submodule.$name.branch in .gitmodules of
> > >      the superproject, instead of the commit that is recorded in the
> > >      index of the superproject.
> > > 
> > 
> > Hmm.  ???git diff??? compares the working tree with the local HEAD (just a
> > SHA for submodules), so I don't think it should care about the status
> > of a remote branch.  This sounds like you want something like:
> > 
> >   $ git submodule foreach 'git diff origin/$submodule_branch'
> > 
> > Perhaps this is enough motivation for keeping $submodule_* exports?
> > 
> > > and the option were called something like "--follow-branch=$branch",
> > > ???
> 
> I am not sure if hiding changes to the recorded SHA1 from the user is
> such a useful thing. In the first step I would like it if it was kept
> simple and only the submodule update machinery learned to follow a
> branch. If that results in local changes that should be shown. The user
> is still in charge of recording the updated SHA1 in his commit.

I understand what you're warning against here, or what it has to do
with "git diff".

> From what I have heard of projects using this: They usually still have
> something that records the SHA1s on a regular basis. Thinking further,
> why not record them in git? We could add an option to update which
> creates such a commit.

I think it's best to have users craft their own commit messages
explaining why the branch was updated.  That said, an auto-generated
hint (a la "git merge") would probably be a useful extra feature.

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