doc: --recurse-submodules mostly applies to active submodules
The documentation refers to "initialized" or "populated" submodules,
to explain which submodules are affected by '--recurse-submodules', but
the real terminology here is 'active' submodules. Update the
documentation accordingly.
Some terminology:
- Active is defined in gitsubmodules(7), it only involves the
configuration variables 'submodule.active', 'submodule.<name>.active'
and 'submodule.<name>.url'. The function
submodule.c::is_submodule_active checks that a submodule is active.
- Populated means that the submodule's working tree is present (and the
gitfile correctly points to the submodule repository), i.e. either the
superproject was cloned with ` --recurse-submodules`, or the user ran
`git submodule update --init`, or `git submodule init [<path>]` and
`git submodule update [<path>]` separately which populated the
submodule working tree. This does not involve the 3 configuration
variables above.
- Initialized (at least in the context of the man pages involved in this
patch) means both "populated" and "active" as defined above, i.e. what
`git submodule update --init` does.
The --recurse-submodules option mostly affects active submodules. An
exception is `git fetch` where the option affects populated submodules.
As a consequence, in `git pull --recurse-submodules` the fetch affects
populated submodules, but the resulting working tree update only affects
active submodules.
In the documentation of `git-pull`, let's distinguish between the
fetching part which affects populated submodules, and the updating of
worktrees, which only affects active submodules.
Signed-off-by: Damien Robert <damien.olivier.robert+git@gmail.com>
Helped-by: Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
diff --git a/Documentation/git-read-tree.txt b/Documentation/git-read-tree.txt
index 501f2ec..5fa8bab 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-read-tree.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-read-tree.txt
@@ -116,7 +116,7 @@
located in.
--[no-]recurse-submodules::
- Using --recurse-submodules will update the content of all initialized
+ Using --recurse-submodules will update the content of all active
submodules according to the commit recorded in the superproject by
calling read-tree recursively, also setting the submodules' HEAD to be
detached at that commit.
