FYI: There *is* actually a hacky/temporary way to use jj with submodules until proper support

[pmorch]

Hi,

I get it. Submodules support isn't here yet. #5205, #1402, #1403, #1404 and #1405. But in the meantime, using a repo that has/needs submodules is actually possible until "proper" support arrives.

E.g. I have a git repo for my hugo-based home page with a submodule for the theme in themes/ananke. I don't change the theme very often, so I'm be fine with it not being the best experience to use the submodule. E.g. I can live with having to jj git clone the submodule myself and checkout the right version.

I tried that:

$ cd themes
$ jj git clone https://github.com/theNewDynamic/gohugo-theme-ananke.git ananke
$ cd ananke
$ jj new 3fc0dba

And as far as I can see, it works "fine" enough for me. Yes, if I make changes to the theme (which I don't) I wont see them. Yes, I need to manually see and/or modify any submodule configuration using git.

But it doesn't preclude me from using jj. Just saying.

The main missing thing: Is there a way to see from jj that I need version 3fc0dba of themes/ananke? I can see the path and url from .gitmodules, but not the version. Because then I could write a jj-submodule-init-update.py script 🙂.

Are there any problems with this that I've overlooked?

[pmorch]

About the missing piece: We can find that themes/ananke has been checked out at 3fc0dba with:

$ jj log -r :: --limit 1 --patch --git themes/ananke                                                
◆  tsmpzlso [email protected] 2025-03-23 00:07:59 ebde216d
│  Went back to an older ananke version to show 'All Posts' again
│  diff --git a/themes/ananke b/themes/ananke
│  index 8e3303d0a4..3fc0dba401 040000

$ jj log -r :: --limit 1 --patch --git themes/ananke | grep '^.  index ' | sed 's/.*\.\.//; s/ .*//' 
3fc0dba401

So now, if I wasn't so lazy, I could actually write a jj-submodule-init-update.py script 🙂