Re: [RFC] Branches with --recurse-submodules

[Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com>]

Hi Glen,

Le 2021-11-15 à 14:03, Glen Choo a écrit :
> Thanks so much Philippe, your responses are very thoughtful.
> 
> Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>>> * `git branch --recurse-submodules topic` should create the branch
>>>     `topic` in each of the repositories.
>>
>> I guess for some workflow this would be the good, but for others you might
>> not need to create submodule branches for each new superproject branch you
>> create.  I think I pointed that out before; I don't necessarily think that
>> creating branches in all submodules should *not* be the default behaviour,
>> but I think that it should be configurable. I mean that if I have 'submodule.recurse'
>> set to true, I would not like 'git branch topic' to create a 'topic' branch
>> in each submodule. So I wish I'll be able to add 'branch.recurseSubmodules = false'
>> to my config (or something similar) to have more granularity in behaviour.
> 
> Yes, as we discussed earlier, this behavior may not be desirable for
> different workflows. I've come to suspect that the branching behavior
> that I proposed should be the default, but I'm ambivalent on being able
> to opt out of the branching.
> 
> In favor of letting users opt out: I'd imagine that behavior might be
> disruptive to users who make frequent changes on the submodule and may
> not appreciate having two sets of branch names (one from the
> superproject and one from the submodule's remotes). I'm not clear on
> whether or not this is disruptive primarily because it is a breaking
> change, or if this just an objectively bad fit for what these users
> want.
> 
> In favor of not letting users opt out: exposing fewer switches to users
> makes it easier for them to get a good user experience. Instead of
> giving users the ability to build-your-own UX, maintaining a small
> configuration surface makes configuration easy and puts the onus back on
> Git (or me, really :P) to make sure that the UX really works well for
> all users, instead of opting out and saying "oh the user has
> branches.recurseSubmodules=false, so I'll choose not to support them".
> I think this stance is good from a product excellence perspective, but
> it's an obvious risk.
> 
> A way forward might be:
> 
> * mitigate the breaking changes by flagging this with
>    feature.experimental
> * test this behavior with real users (aka internal) and iterate from
>    there
> 
> Does that make sense? I'd like to make sure I'm not missing something
> very big here.

It does, but I think that we can still build a flexible product without
compromising UI/UX :)

> 
>> Also, I assume the new behaviour would carry over to 'git checkout -b' and
>> 'git switch -c' ?
>>> * `git switch --recurse-submodules topic` should checkout the branch
>>>     `topic` in each of the repositories
>>
>> Nit: I guess you also include 'git checkout --r topic' here also ?
> 
> Yes and yes (I believe --r refers to --recurse-submodules?).

Yes, and it works on the command-line ! ;) long options can be shortened
if unambiguous, see 'man gitcli'.