Stash support for GIT - Submodules

Question

Hello ,

Does stash support sub modules creation and managemnt ? As per the definition - Submodules allow you to keep a Git repository as a subdirectory of another Git repository. This lets you clone another repository into your project and keep your commits separate.

Since we are migrating from clearcase UCM to GIT , we are looking to figure out a way for third party component management / Read only component management  as we transition to GIt . In clearcase , we were keeping the modules that were developed and compiled seperately , in a UCM component and were pointing our UCM stream configuration to that particular baseline to import the module library . I assume that sub modules is the only option in GIT to acheive this . Will stash facilitate sub- module usage ?

Thanks ,

Mohan

David Woods4 · Answer

If you want this feature I recommend you vote for it as I did at https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/STASH-2625

Also as a practical usecase, bamboo does support submodules if your using the full set of Atlassian products.

On a personal note this may be the deciding issue for my team between the purchase of Stash or github enterprise.

cofarrell · Answer

Hi Mohan,

I'm afraid to say that Stash doesn't really have any support for submodules. It would be good if we could display submodule links in the file browser, and hopefully we could do something like that, but I'm not sure how we would go about managing them just yet. That shouldn't really stop you from using them though.

That said, personally I would stay away from submodules. They are rougly equivalent to UCM streams, but less integrated. I would just make sure you understand some of the limitiations before using them.

http://somethingsinistral.net/blog/git-submodules-are-probably-not-the-answer/

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3904932

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3926897

As a suggestion, if you are using Java (for example) I would personally use a tool like Maven/Ivy to manage your dependencies rather than Git Submodules. That is probably a much bigger problem/complexity than just switching SCMs, but something to keep in mind.

Cheers,

Charles