[okfn-help] Open Data Manual - help with git please

Mon Aug 15 21:58:42 UTC 2011

On 15 Aug 2011, at 22:39, Tim McNamara wrote:

> I'm a bit out of my depth with git submodules and have spent too long
> researching with not enough action. Could someone please suggest the
> route forward:
> 
> Situation
> The Open Data Manual has its theme as a submodule. We need to
> customise this theme to resolve a few tickets. There seem to be two
> possible routes to do this:
> 
> 1) incorporate the submodule as part of the opendatamanual repo
> 2) fork the upstream and change .gitsubmodules to point to new repo
> 
> 1 is my preferred option. It gives us more flexibility to make
> wholesale changes if desired.

Yeah, the question is really about how much you anticipate this theme will diverge from the upstream version in the future.

If you are expecting to make major customisations to the theme, so much so that it bears little relation to the upstream version, and such that merging in changes from the upstream version would be pointless/difficult, then option 1 makes sense. You're disconnecting your version of the theme from the upstream version, and forging your own path.

If you expect that you will want to merge in updates from the upstream theme often, or for the foreseeable future, then option 2 would make your life easier. You will have to get familiar with hopping in and out of the submodule and running the necessary branching/update commands, but it's not tricky once you understand what's happening.

Chris