Question

I’ve been in the process of getting rid of git submodules lately. Sometimes I’m adding new files where there’s been the submodule.

I’m looking for a nice way to drop a submodule, and add some files in it’s place without creating merge problems for pulling users.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

This is a commit where I’ve removed a submodule definition and added some files as replacement:

$:~/src/github/huerlisi/mailyt$ git show d1e7e1276fdccb37f775c8f656077e490a0b7be8
commit d1e7e1276fdccb37f775c8f656077e490a0b7be8
Author: Simon Hürlimann (CyT) <[e-mail]>
Date:   Wed May 11 22:07:49 2011 +0200

    Vendor in formtastic sass, drop git submodule.

diff --git a/.gitmodules b/.gitmodules
index 24f8f38..e6177d1 100644
--- a/.gitmodules
+++ b/.gitmodules
@@ -1,6 +1,3 @@
 [submodule "vendor/plugins/fetcher"]
        path = vendor/plugins/fetcher
        url = git://github.com/huerlisi/fetcher.git
-[submodule "app/stylesheets/partials/formtastic"]
-       path = app/stylesheets/partials/formtastic
-       url = git://github.com/activestylus/formtastic-sass.git
diff --git a/app/stylesheets/partials/formtastic b/app/stylesheets/partials/formtastic
deleted file mode 160000
index 1b920cb..0000000
--- a/app/stylesheets/partials/formtastic
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-Subproject commit 1b920cb2db627cb7cf11cf4d3cea373a774a6fd3
diff --git a/app/stylesheets/partials/formtastic/_formtastic_base.sass b/app/stylesheets/partials/formtastic/_formtastic_base.sass
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b01ac8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/app/stylesheets/partials/formtastic/_formtastic_base.sass
@@ -0,0 +1,652 @@
+//
+// FORMTASTIC SASS
+// Flexible styling for formtastic forms

Merging this commit into my working dir with the submodule checked out gives this error:

~/src/github/huerlisi/mailyt$ git pull
remote: Counting objects: 35, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (23/23), done.
remote: Total 24 (delta 16), reused 0 (delta 0)
Unpacking objects: 100% (24/24), done.
From github.com:huerlisi/mailyt
   2d055d6..82a45be  master     -> origin/master
 * [new branch]      notmuch    -> origin/notmuch
Updating 2d055d6..82a45be
error: The following untracked working tree files would be overwritten by merge:
        app/stylesheets/partials/formtastic/_formtastic_base.sass
Please move or remove them before you can merge.
Aborting

Manually removing the app/stylesheets/partials/formtastic directory before merging works. But I’d like my fellow coders to be able to simply pull and code.

Answer 1

There is nothing you can do for them from your side. Since submodules are full repositories with ref log and rerere histories, a pull will not get rid of them. Neither will a merge. They will have to explicitly perform rm -rf on them when they get those changes in. This is by design to save people from inadvertently wiping their work and/or ref logs, etc.

Hope this helps