Subject: Re: [RFC] Submodules in GIT

From: Andy Parkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 16:08:27 +0000

On Thursday 2006 November 30 15:50, Andreas Ericsson wrote:

> > Obviously, this is grossly simplified.  It also requires that HEAD be
> > allowed to be an arbitrary commit rather than a branch, but that's
> > already been generally agreed upon as a good thing.
>
> It has? We're not talking supermodule specific things anymore, are we?

Not entirely, although I think it's going to be handy for submodules.  It was 
in a thread about remotes branches.  By allowing checkout of any commit 
rather than only those that have a ref/heads/ entry, you effectively have a 
read-only checkout.  You obviously couldn't commit to a repository like this, 
because HEAD wouldn't point at anything that is changeable.  It would be very 
easy to just git-branch from there and start work though.

I think it's going to be necessary for the submodule work, because without it 
the supermodule will have to create it's own temporary branches in the 
submodule in order to checkout an arbitrary commit.

Andy

-- 
Dr Andy Parkins, M Eng (hons), MIEE