Re: git-archive and submodules

[Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>]

On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 1:37 PM, Anatoly Borodin
<anatoly.borodin@gmail.com> wrote:
> are there plans to add submodules support to git-archive?

plans by whom?

Git is a project with contributors from all over the place. (different
time zones,
people motivated by different means, i.e. we have the hobbiest that
scratches their
itch, we have paid people working on Git because their employer wants
them to work on Git,
there are other people (who like to) use Git in their work environment
and hack on it
in their spare time to make it awesome.)

AFAICT there are currently not a lot of people actively working on
submodule features,
though there is some history, e.g. Jens Lehmann maintains a wiki
specialised on submodules
https://github.com/jlehmann/git-submod-enhancements/wiki
and archive is mentioned there as one of the many "Issues still to be tackled".

Maybe you want to give it a try as you need it? I'd be happy to review any
submodule related code.

How to get started:

 * git clone https://github.com/git/git
 * Read (at least skim) Documentation/SubmittingPatches)
 * Look at builtin/archive.c as a starting point (cmd_archive is called
    when you call "git archive ...")
 * That leads to archive.c:write_archive, which calls parse_archive_args
  There we'd want to add an option there for recursing into submodules.
 * See write_archive_entry (still in archive.c) that mentions S_ISGITLINK
   Somewhere there you need to add code. :)

Thanks,
Stefan