documentation and functionality for git submodule update?

[tdhock]

related to #165

https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Submodules says there is a command called git submodule update, but ?git_submodule_list does not mention "update" anywhere? Is git_submodule_fetch() the R equivalent? Can you please add more documentation to ?git_submodule_list to explain the correspondence between command line git and gert functions?

Is there a gert equivalent of git submodule update --init --recursive ?

I tried git_submodule_fetch() but there are three issues relative to the git command:

• you have to name which submodule (I want to do all of them)
• it is not recursive
• it only fetches (does not checkout)

[tdhock]

https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Submodules says:
If you already cloned the project and forgot --recurse-submodules, you can combine the git submodule init and git submodule update steps by running git submodule update --init. To also initialize, fetch and checkout any nested submodules, you can use the foolproof git submodule update --init --recursive.

[maelle]

@tdhock what's relevant to gert is not the documentation of Git itself only, but also of libgit2. Now, for that manual page we had forgotten to add the relevant link, now done #277

So if you want to explore more, it'd be relevant to explore gert's source as well as https://libgit2.org/docs/reference/main/submodule/index.html

[tdhock]

Hi Maëlle, thanks for linking the libgit2 docs.
However I do not see an answer to my question, "Is there a gert equivalent of git submodule update --init --recursive ?"
I guess the answer is no, is that right?
In that case would you be open to a PR to add that functionality?

[maelle]

Yes it seems impossible at the moment.
Yes a PR would be welcome! 😺