Root .gitmodules shared between multiple yadm configurations

[MyNameIsCosmo]

When using multiple YADM configs (alias yadm-bin='yadm --yadm-repo ~/bin, etc), and when adding submodules, YADM writes to the same ~/.gitmodules file.

This has not been an issue for me, and I don't think this actually entails an issue in yadm, but I felt it should be brought up for future consideration and testing.

Edit:
This is actually an issue, where the same .gitmodules file will be added to each yadm configuration using submodules.

[MyNameIsCosmo]

Perhaps yadm can wrap around submodule like so:

yadm-bin update-index --no-assume-unchanged
yadm-bin stash push -m 'yadm submodule' .gitmodules  # reference git home dir
yadm-bin submodule add <blah>
yadm-bin add .gitmodules  # I think this is done automatically
yadm-bin stash pop  # maybe we can track the index from above? does it matter?
yadm-bin update-index --assume-unchanged .gitmodules

[TheLocehiliosan]

This is sort-of a fundamental part of how submodules are implemented in Git. Git wants to get that information from the .gitmodules in the work tree. To the best of my knowledge, the only way to have Git look for that elsewhere is with a one of the most recent releases of Git. That version has the ability to read the .gitmodules information from the blob in the repo, and only falls back on that if the work tree version is missing. I think the use case for that involves a sparse-checkout configuration.

The crux of the issue is that you have multiple repos sharing the same work tree. Tracking data with multiple repos contradicts one of yadm's core design principles (using a single repo). If you really want to track the data in multiple repos, you might want to try out vcsh. Although, if I remember correctly, vcsh actually has problems with submodules for the same reason.

I would be very hesitant to introduce any special handling of the submodule operation, as an effort to support multiple repositories. However, hooks could be a great way to implement your idea in a shareable way. This is exactly the kind of niche use case that hooks were implemented for.

[MyNameIsCosmo]

Thanks for the information!

I'm using YADM to split up my .dotfiles and .dotfiles.private.
The yadm-bin example was just an off-the-top example.

This behavior makes sense. It has not been a problem for me (yet) since I don't actually use git submodule (I either use plugin managers, or something like vcs-tool).

Closing this for now, as this isn't really an issue but should be known for future adventurers.

[Thaodan]

This is sort-of a fundamental part of how submodules are implemented in Git. Git wants to get that information from the .gitmodules in the work tree.

Can yadm treat a folder such as $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/private as separate worktree?