submodule: teach rm to remove submodules unless they contain a git directory

Currently using "git rm" on a submodule - populated or not - fails with
this error:

	fatal: git rm: '<submodule path>': Is a directory

This made sense in the past as there was no way to remove a submodule
without possibly removing unpushed parts of the submodule's history
contained in its .git directory too, so erroring out here protected the
user from possible loss of data.

But submodules cloned with a recent git version do not contain the .git
directory anymore, they use a gitfile to point to their git directory
which is safely stored inside the superproject's .git directory. The work
tree of these submodules can safely be removed without losing history, so
let's teach git to do so.

Using rm on an unpopulated submodule now removes the empty directory from
the work tree and the gitlink from the index. If the submodule's directory
is missing from the work tree, it will still be removed from the index.

Using rm on a populated submodule using a gitfile will apply the usual
checks for work tree modification adapted to submodules (unless forced).
For a submodule that means that the HEAD is the same as recorded in the
index, no tracked files are modified and no untracked files that aren't
ignored are present in the submodules work tree (ignored files are deemed
expendable and won't stop a submodule's work tree from being removed).
That logic has to be applied in all nested submodules too.

Using rm on a submodule which has its .git directory inside the work trees
top level directory will just error out like it did before to protect the
repository, even when forced. In the future git could either provide a
message informing the user to convert the submodule to use a gitfile or
even attempt to do the conversion itself, but that is not part of this
change.

Signed-off-by: Jens Lehmann <Jens.Lehmann@web.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/submodule.h b/submodule.h
index e105b0e..9c0f6a4 100644
--- a/submodule.h
+++ b/submodule.h
@@ -27,6 +27,8 @@ int fetch_populated_submodules(int num_options, const char **options,
 			       const char *prefix, int command_line_option,
 			       int quiet);
 unsigned is_submodule_modified(const char *path, int ignore_untracked);
+int submodule_uses_gitfile(const char *path);
+int ok_to_remove_submodule(const char *path);
 int merge_submodule(unsigned char result[20], const char *path, const unsigned char base[20],
 		    const unsigned char a[20], const unsigned char b[20], int search);
 int find_unpushed_submodules(unsigned char new_sha1[20], const char *remotes_name,