How to properly rename a repository with submodules

How to properly rename a repository with submodules

[Gelonida N]

Hi,

Today I noticed to my surprise, that a repository with submodules 
contains absolute paths.in the .git file of each sub module.

This is kind of surprising to me and seems to make it absolutely 
impossible to have a non bare git repository on a memory stick.

It also seems to make it impossible to rename a working repository after 
cloning.

So I have three questions.

1.) Is there any way to force git to use relative path names, such, that 
this issue just disappears.

2,) Is there any existing script, that allows me to move a git 
repository to another location without breaking it's sub modules.

3.) Why do these path names have to be absolute? Is this for performance 
reasons? path names relative to the location of the .git file seem to be 
much more flexible / portable.


Thanks in advance for your answers

Re: How to properly rename a repository with submodules

[Gelonida N]

On 05/20/2012 08:19 PM, Gelonida N wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Today I noticed to my surprise, that a repository with submodules
> contains absolute paths.in the .git file of each sub module.
>
> This is kind of surprising to me and seems to make it absolutely
> impossible to have a non bare git repository on a memory stick.
>
> It also seems to make it impossible to rename a working repository after
> cloning.
>
> So I have three questions.
>
> 1.) Is there any way to force git to use relative path names, such, that
> this issue just disappears.
>
> 2,) Is there any existing script, that allows me to move a git
> repository to another location without breaking it's sub modules.
>
> 3.) Why do these path names have to be absolute? Is this for performance
> reasons? path names relative to the location of the .git file seem to be
> much more flexible / portable.
>

It seems this behaviur is just on one of my 'new' machines which was 
upgraded to
Ubuntu 12.04 (git version 1.7.9.5)


on my old machines I had either really old git versions or the most 
recent ones 1.7.10


I just added ppa:git-core/ppa to the Ubuntu sources and upgraded git to 
1.7.10

Problem solved!! Path names are now relative. So it seems it wasn't only 
me thinking absolute path names are a bad idea :-)