• ruffsl@programming.dev
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    9 months ago

    Ah man, I’m with a project that already uses a poly repo setup and am starting an integration repo using submodules to coordinate the Dev environment and unify with CI/CD. Sub modules have been great for introspection and and versioning, rather than relying on some opaque configuration file to check out all the different poly repos at build time. I can click the the sub module links on GitHub and redirect right to the reference commit, while many IDEs can also already associate the respective git tag for each sub module when opening from the super project.

    I was kind of bummed to hear that working trees didn’t have full support with some modules. I haven’t used working trees with this super project yet, but what did you find about its incompatibility with some modules? Are there certain porcelain commands just not supported, or certain behaviors don’t work as expected? Have you tried the global git config to enable recursive over sub modules by default?

    • QuadriLiteral@programming.dev
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      9 months ago

      I found basic functioning of worktrees to fail with submodules. The worktree doesn’t know about submodules, and again and again messes up the links to it. Basic pulling, switching branches, …, all of this frequently fails to work because the link to the submodule is broken. I ended up creating the submodules as worktrees of a separate checkout of the submodule repo, and recreating these submodule worktrees over and over. I pretty much stopped using worktrees at that point.

      Have you tried the global git config to enable recursive over sub modules by default?

      Nope, fingers crossed it helps for you ;) Unrelated to worktrees but: in the end I like submodules in theory but found them to be absolutely terrible in practice, that’s without even factoring in the worktrees. So we went back to a monorepo.