Subject: Re: [RFC/PATCH] add update to branch support for "floating submodules"

From: Gioele Barabucci <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2011 14:16:22 +0000

On 09/11/2011 18:01, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> This is almost ready but I would like to know what users of the
>> "floating submodule" think about this.
 >
> I do like to hear from potential users as well, because the general
> impression we got was that floating submodules is not a real need of
> anybody,

Floating modules are something much sought after by those who use Git 
for non-development purposes, like those who have most of their $HOME 
versioned with Git [1]. For example, part of what Joey Hess's `mr` tool 
[2] does is to simulate floating submodules for Git-versioned $HOMEs.

In the context of versioned $HOMEs, or with backups in general, precise 
tracking of submodules updates is not that important. To quote [3]: 
«Last, change tracking is a bit more lenient with home directories. I 
may shuffle some stuff around, and I don't need to explain the changes 
to anyone else.». In my case, I want my ~/Documents dir (that is in a 
different repo from $HOME) to be always updated; I would prefer not to 
deal with submodule updates, merges and detached HEADs.

Bye,

[1] http://vcs-home.branchable.com/
[2] http://kitenet.net/~joey/code/mr/
[3] http://joshcarter.com/productivity/svn_hg_git_for_home_directory

--
Gioele Barabucci <[email-masked]>