git module sync doesn't work unless the submodules have been initialised

[ianhinder]

To set up a new super-repository, I do the following:

git clone cd Edit .gitmodules git module sync

However, this doesn't work,

vpn-external-022:Kerrness (master) $ git module sync fatal: No such section! Traceback (most recent call last): File "/Users/ian/Cactus/EinsteinToolkit/bin/git-module", line 294, in sys.exit(main(*sys.argv)) File "/Users/ian/Cactus/EinsteinToolkit/bin/git-module", line 289, in main args.func(args) File "/Users/ian/Cactus/EinsteinToolkit/bin/git-module", line 192, in sync_gitmodules sr.sync_gitmodules() File "/Users/ian/Cactus/EinsteinToolkit/repos/git-module/GitSuperRepository.py", line 299, in sync_gitmodules self.rm_submodule(module) File "/Users/ian/Cactus/EinsteinToolkit/repos/git-module/GitSuperRepository.py", line 186, in rm_submodule self.config(['--remove-section', 'submodule.'+old]) File "/Users/ian/Cactus/EinsteinToolkit/repos/git-module/GitSuperRepository.py", line 88, in config return self.git_command(['config'] + command, module) File "/Users/ian/Cactus/EinsteinToolkit/repos/git-module/GitSuperRepository.py", line 76, in git_command return check_output(['git', git_dir, work_tree] + command, cwd=self.__path).rstrip('\n') File "/sw/lib/python2.7/subprocess.py", line 537, in check_output raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd, output=output) subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['git', '--git-dir=/Users/ian/Cactus/Kerrness/.git', '--work-tree=/Users/ian/Cactus/Kerrness', 'config', '--remove-section', 'submodule.arrangements/CactusTest/TestTypes']' returned non-zero exit status 128

because I didn't do

git submodule init

before the sync. Is it possible to detect that the submodules have not been initialised, and print a nicer error message?

[barrywardell]

The simple solution is to remember to use --recursive when doing the initial clone. I agree, though, that git module should check for this and print a nicer error message.

[ianhinder]

Ah but I didn't want to download all the submodules. I wanted to modify the .gitmodules file to cut it down to what I needed before downloading a lot of data. So it looks like the init is the way to go. I think if it printed an error message which told you that you needed to "init", then that would be enough.