[Buildroot] [PATCH] suport/download: fix git wrapper with submodules on older git versions

[Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@bootlin.com>]

On Sun, 24 May 2020 13:47:18 +0200
"Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998@free.fr> wrote:

> +    # Older versions of git will store the absolute path of the git tree
> +    # in the .git of submodules, while newer versions just use relative
> +    # paths. Detect and fix the older variants to use relative paths, so
> +    # that the archives are reproducible across a wider range of git
> +    # versions. However, we can't do that if git is too old and uses
> +    # full repositories for submodules.

If I understand correctly, there are three "eras":

 - Really old Git versions, where full repositories are used for
   submodules, where we can't do anything.

 - Old Git versions, that stored absolute paths.

 - Recent Git versions, that store relative paths.

Would it be possible to identify which versions we're talking about
here? I'm sure you've done that research, and I think it makes sense to
capture that, as we will certainly wonder what we mean by "older
versions", "old version", "new version.

What is new, old, or older today, will feel quite different 5 years
from now.

Thomas
-- 
Thomas Petazzoni, CTO, Bootlin
Embedded Linux and Kernel engineering
https://bootlin.com