how to checkout proper submodules

[Simon Marlow]

On 08/06/13 08:38, Geoffrey Mainland wrote:
> On 06/06/2013 09:44 PM, Simon Marlow wrote:
>> On 05/06/13 16:59, Ian Lynagh  wrote:
>  >> On Tue, Jun 04, 2013 at 09:05:58PM -0500, Austin Seipp wrote:
>  >>>
>  >>> I know we had this discussion sometime recently I think, but can
>  >>> someone *please* explain why we are in this situation of half
>  >>> submodules, half random-floating-git-repository-checkouts?
>  >>
>  >> Submodules are very handy for libraries that someone else maintains: We
>  >> can make a local change to the library when we need something fixed,
>  >> and then, when upstream has a fix too, we can jump straight to their
> fix
>  >> without having to do any merging.
>  >>
>  >> However, submodules have various disadvantages, e.g.
>  >>
> http://codingkilledthecat.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/why-your-company-shouldnt-use-git-submodules/
>
>  >>
>  >> The main one for me is that it's fairly easy to lose local changes when
>  >> using submodules. This is relatively unimportant for the libraries that
>  >> someone else maintains, as we don't often make any local changes to
>  >> lose. Even so, I've lost changes on a couple of occasions.
>  >
>  > Drive-by-comment: 'sync-all new' doesn't work since we switched to
>  > submodules.  If someone could fix that I'd be very grateful (or
>  > alternatively tell me what workflow you use to figure out what patches
>  > you have in your local repos that aren't upstream).
>  >
>  > Another thing that annoys me about submodules is that I like to keep a
>  > local mirror of the GHC repos on my computer.  When I clone from it,
>  > the submodules all come from darcs.haskell.org instead of my local
>  > mirror. I know how to fix this by hand, but it's sync-all's job to get
>  > this right (it does for the other repos).
>  >
>  > Cheers,
>  >     Simon
>
> Yes, I have hit this problem too. It's the cause of many of the nightly
> build failures at GHC HQ.
>
> Does anyone know how to get git-submodule to use a mirror? There is the
> --reference option to 'git submodule update', but I think it still needs
> a network connection.

IIRC, you have to manually edit the .git/config file at the correct time 
(after git submodule init, but before the pull).  But sync-all doesn't 
stop between these two steps, so it's a bit more fiddly.

Cheers,
	Simon



> Geoff
>
>>> So the reason we entered  this state is that we didn't think the
>  >> advantages outweighed the disadvantages for the other repositories.
>  >>
>  >>
>  >> Thanks
>  >> Ian
>