[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#1092286: Git Submodules Considered Harmful

[Andreas Tille]

Hi Barak,

thanks a lot for your bug report against routine-update.  Any hints for
potential enhancements are perfectly welcome.

Am Mon, Jan 06, 2025 at 09:39:00PM +0000 schrieb Barak A. Pearlmutter:
> Package: routine-update
> Version: 0.2.2
> 
> Instead of using the appropriate git commands, routine-update seems to
> check if there is a .git/config file or something like that.

I can't find any match for this line in routine-update.

> But git
> submodule will place a text file .git with a pointer to the gitdir in
> it, as below.
> 
> $ ls -ld .git
> -rw-rw-r-- 1 barak barak 30 May 19  2022 .git
> 
> $ cat .git
> gitdir: ../.git/modules/chuck
> 
> $ git log --oneline -1
> 7495e4f7 (HEAD -> debian, origin/debian) log merge
> 
> $ routine-update
> E: This tool is meant to update also the remote git repository with
> Debian's changes, but this is not a git repository.

I guess you are stumbling upon:

196 elif [ ! -d .git ]; then
197   echo "E: This tool is meant to update also the remote git repository with Debian's changes, but this is not a git repository."
198   exit 1
199 fi

I lived under the impression that any package that is using gbp has a
directory named .git.  If this is a wrong assumoption can you please
point me to some/your repository where I can reproduce the issue and
fix the check?

To find out whether we are in the root of some Git repository I could
imagine something like

if [ ! "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2>/dev/null)" = "$(pwd)" ]; then
    echo "E: This tool is meant to update also the remote git repository with Debian's changes, but this is not a git repository."
    exit 1
fi

(hmmm, possibly the error message is worth some enhancement) but this
was in my naive mind a bit more complex than necessary.  It should
simply make sure routine-update is not run into a non-git source tree
since the tool is doing Git commits later.

Kind regards
   Andreas.

-- 
https://fam-tille.de