Re: Making submodules easier to work with

[Roman Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com>]

On Thu, 2008-05-01 at 16:29 -0700, Steven Grimm wrote:
> On May 1, 2008, at 11:38 AM, Finn Arne Gangstad wrote:
> > Where do we want to go with submodules?
> 
> I have two uses for submodules.
> 
> The first one is... well, not really submodules at all. I really want  
> sparse checkout so I can avoid bothering with parts of the larger  
> project tree I don't care about or need.

When you say "checkout" do you really mean "git checkout" (IOW, you
still have the history for *everything* in .git but you just
don't want your working tree to be polluted by the stuff you don't
need at the moment) or are you talking about "partial cloning"?
The reason I'm asking is because a need for "partial cloning"
is very real around where I work. Which is easy to understand
because TeamWare (a precursor to BitKeeper) supports such a
concept. Now, before I get beaten to death: I DO understand why 
"partial cloning" and changeset-oriented SCMs don't go together
well. Yet, it seems to me that a sort of "transitive closure"
of the changesets for the files I'm actually interested in might
be a natural way of having such a feature.

>  But right now submodules are  
> the only way to approximate sparse checkout, 

For us submodules seem to be  the only way to approximate "sparse
cloning" and that's why the usage patterns I worry about don't
necessarily match the ones that drive "git submodule"

Thanks,
Roman.