Subject: Re: [PATCH/RFC] submodule: add ability to shallowly clone any branch in a submodule

From: Jens Lehmann <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 13:11:11 +0200

Am 12.09.2014 um 07:21 schrieb Fredrik Gustafsson:
> On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 10:33:51PM +0200, Cole wrote:
>> Also if there is anything else you are currently looking at regarding
>> submodules or thinking about, I would be glad to hear about it or to try
>> look at it while I am working on these changes. Or if there is anything
>> you can think of for me to check with regards to these changes that
>> would also be appreciated.
>
> When implementing the --depth argument for submodules, I would have
> prefered that the depth was set from the commit of the submodules
> refered from the superprojekt and not it's branch.

That would help recursive fetch too.

> However this can't be done, since you can only clone from refs and not
> from a commit. However there's nothing that stops us from allowing to
> clone from a commit (of course we need to make sure that that commit is
> in a tree with a ref as leaf).
>
> I see this as a natural next step for the --depth function and something
> needed for it to be really useful. I'm actually suprised that people
> successfully uses the --depth function already since you always need to
> know how deep down the commit is.

I suspect this only works because users set the depth high enough or the
submodule is updated frequently to the tip of a branch.