Re: Managing submodules on large multi-user projects

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>]

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 9:41 PM, R. Tyler Ballance <tyler@slide.com> wrote:
> As some of you may recall from my last swath of emails to the list
> regarding memory usage and repository size, we have quite a large
> repository. About a month ago, I added a submodule to the primary repo
> in an effort to start to segment where possible, particularly around
> third party modules.
>
> I've noticed that keeping submodules updated is an absolute pain,
> particularly with a large multiuser setup with *lots* of branches.
>
>
> What will tend to happen is that the submodule reference will be updated
> in the master branch (we use a centralized model) and then committed
> (imagine the commit reference was incremented from A-B).
>
> Other developers with other branches will then periodically merge master
> into their project/topic branches but will either neglect to run
> `git submodule update` or our bootstrap script (which also executes the
> submodule update command). At this point they'll have outstanding
> changes of their own, and the submodule will be marked as "modified" as
> well. Usually what will then happen is they'll `git commit -a` without
> thinking and the submodule's reference will be changed (typically from
> B->A, undoing the previous change).
>
>
> Are there any saner ways of managing this? I've been trying to get the
> `git submodule update` command to run with as many hooks as possible
> (pre-commit, post-update) to make sure that developers aren't
> inadvertantly breaking things, but nothing seems to ensure that
> *everybody* is up to date and that *everybody* doesn't inadvertantly
> commit changes to the submodule?

Have you tried repo?
http://source.android.com/download/using-repo

-- 
Felipe Contreras