Re: git cat-file on a submodule

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 07:11:40PM -0500, David Turner wrote:
>
>> Why does git cat-file -t $sha:foo, where foo is a submodule, not work?
> ...
> I'm not sure if I'm complaining or not. I can't immediately think of
> something that would be horribly broken. But it really feels like you
> are using the wrong tool, and patching the tool to handle this case will
> probably lead to weird cognitive dissonance down the road.

"git cat-file [any option] $sha" should fail and complain for any
$sha that does not name an object that exists in the object database
of the repository it is working on.  

So I'd complain if the first example command quoted above from
David's mail stopped failing when the commit bound at 'foo' in the
top-level treeish $sha (i.e. a commit in the submodule) does not
exist in the top-level repository's object database.

> Maybe it would help to describe your use case more fully. If what you
> care about is the presumed type based on the surrounding tree, then
> maybe:
>
>   git --literal-pathspecs ls-tree $sha -- foo
>
> would be a better match.

Yup.