With more commands (that potentially change a submodule) paying attention to submodules as well as the recent discussion[1] on submodule.<name>.update, let's spell out that submodule.<name>.update is strictly to be used for configuring the "submodule update" command and not to be obeyed by other commands.
These other commands usually have a strict meaning of what they should do (i.e. checkout, reset, rebase, merge) as well as have their name overlapping with the modes possible for submodule.<name>.update. [1] https://public-inbox.org/git/4283f0b0-bc1c-4ed1-8126-7e512d844...@gmail.com/ submodule.<name>.update was set to "none", triggering unexpected behavior as the submodule was thought to never be touched. However a newer version of Git taught 'git pull --rebase' to also populate and rebase submodules if they were active. The newer options such as submodule.active and command specific flags would not have triggered unexpected behavior. Reported-by: Lars Schneider <larsxschnei...@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Stefan Beller <sbel...@google.com> --- Documentation/config.txt | 12 ++++++++---- 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) Jonathan writes: > You'll want to update Documentation/gitmodules.txt, too. No. /grumpycat It should already be fine, as I read it as if it is only relevant to "git submodule update" there, already: submodule.<name>.update:: Defines the default update procedure for the named submodule, i.e. how the submodule is updated by "git submodule update" command in the superproject. This is only used by `git submodule init` to initialize the configuration variable of the same name. Allowed values here are 'checkout', 'rebase', 'merge' or 'none'. See description of 'update' command in linkgit:git-submodule[1] for their meaning. Note that the '!command' form is intentionally ignored here for security reasons. diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt index dc4e3f58a2..1ac0ae6adb 100644 --- a/Documentation/config.txt +++ b/Documentation/config.txt @@ -3085,10 +3085,14 @@ submodule.<name>.url:: See linkgit:git-submodule[1] and linkgit:gitmodules[5] for details. submodule.<name>.update:: - The default update procedure for a submodule. This variable - is populated by `git submodule init` from the - linkgit:gitmodules[5] file. See description of 'update' - command in linkgit:git-submodule[1]. + The method by which a submodule is updated by 'git submodule update', + which is the only affected command, others such as + 'git checkout --recurse-submodules' are unaffected. It exists for + historical reasons, when 'git submodule' was the only command to + interact with submodules; settings like `submodule.active` + and `pull.rebase` are more specific. It is populated by + `git submodule init` from the linkgit:gitmodules[5] file. + See description of 'update' command in linkgit:git-submodule[1]. submodule.<name>.branch:: The remote branch name for a submodule, used by `git submodule -- 2.14.0.rc0.3.g6c2e499285
