Re: [RFC] Submodules in GIT

["Torgil Svensson" <torgil.svensson@gmail.com>]

On 12/16/06, Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:
> > 100644 blob <sha1 of blob>  >
> >>
> >
> > Sorry, I was sloppy and forgot the names:
> >
> > 100644 blob <sha1 of blob>    README
> > 100644 blob <sha1 of blob>    REPORTING-BUGS
> > 100644 link <sha1 of blob>     <sha1 of commit>   AUTHORS
> > 040000 tree <sha1 of tree>    arch
> > 040000 tree <sha1 of tree>    block
> > 040000 link <sha1 of tree>     <sha1 of commit>   misc
> >
> > Now it doesn't looks like trees/blobs anymore so maybe a link object
> > is handy:
> >  README
> > 100644 blob <sha1 of blob>    REPORTING-BUGS
> > 100644 link <sha1 of link>      AUTHORS
> > 040000 tree <sha1 of tree>    arch
> > 040000 tree <sha1 of tree>    block
> > 040000 link <sha1 of link>     misc
> >
> > link-object:
> > <sha1 of commit>
> > <sha1 of tree/blob>
>
> What do you need <sha1 of tree/blob> for in link-object? Wouldn't you
> use usually the sha1 of top tree of a commit, which is uniquely defined
> by commit object, so you need only <ahs1 of commit>?
>

1. "Sparse" repository's - In my example, I want to cherry-pick
header-files or binary-files from different projects without fetching
all, potentially huge, submodules in their entirety. Imaging having X,
kernel, gcc, gtk and libc6 as sub-projects and you really only care
about some header files.

2. Super-module directory-hierarchy independent from submodules.
Super-project want to have the header-files and binaries it's own way.
This also gives version controlled file-collections, the "release
case" in my example - collecting different binaries and header-files
from different submodules together in a new directory-structure, add
some documentation and configuration files and get the whole thing
under strong version-control down to the beginning of time for each
little component.

3. Super-module development independent of submodules - If we have the
tree/blob-object with all it contents in the database many
git-operations can act as the link (commit) wasn't there since we have
access to all relevant data to work with. This makes it easy to clone
the super-project and work on it seamlessly without having to care
about submodules or mapping up submodule repository's (unless you want
to modify the links or the data underneath it of course).