Re: [PATCHv2 4/4] submodule: add embed-git-dir function

[Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>]

On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 1:39 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> writes:
>
>>     git relocate-git-dir (--into-workingtree|--into-gitdir) \
>
> I am not sure if you meant this as a submodule-specific subcommand
> or more general helper.  "into-workingtree" suggests to me that it
> is submodule specific, so I'll base my response on that assumption.
>
> Would there ever be a situation where you already have submodule
> repositories in the right place (according to the more modern
> practice, to keep them in .git/modules/ of superproject) and want to
> move them to embed them in worktrees of submodules?  I do not think
> of any.

 "Hi, I made a mistake by using submodules. I don't want to use
  them any more, I rather want to:
  A) make it a separate git repo again and I'll keep them in sync myself
  B) ... "

 "I abuse submodules for what git-LFS was designed for, and the
  submodule is on a different mount point, please keep the git directory
  also at that mount point".

Not sure I agree these problems and the proposed solutions are beautiful,
but that is what people may think of as a fast hack?

>
> If there is no such situation, I do not think we want a verb that is
> direction-neutral (e.g. "move" or "relocate") with two options.
> Rather we would want "git submodule unembed-git-dir" or something
> like that.

So when we want to have a generic function in C ("relocate_gitdir")
for both worktree and submodules, the recursive flag is not supposed
to invoke a submodule specific helper, but a generic helper.

Alternatively we make the function not as generic and claim the
recursive part is submodule specific and we can happily call
"git submodule [un]embed-git-dir" recursively.