gitdeps is a fairly experimental script for managing git submodules in a
declarative fashion. It's somewhat of an alternative to dependency management
tools like npm or Maven which require dependencies to have a specific structure
(package.json/pom.xml). gitdeps does not trace dependencies, but it will pull
any valid git repositories regardless of structure and store them as standard
git submodules. Because of this, consumers of a project using gitdeps need not
use gitdeps themselves and can initialize the submodules via the usual git submodule update --init.
.gitdeps is a JSON file in the root of your repository. It looks like this:
[
{
//submodule will be stored as externals/<name>
"name": "amd-utils",
//url to the git repo
"url": "git://github.com/millermedeiros/amd-utils.git",
//a "commit-ish" tag, branch, or hash. defaults to "master"
"commit": "v0.10.0",
//(optional) array of symbolic links to create, with
//target = externals/<name>
"symlinks": [
{
//(optional) directory under the repository's root.
//created symlink's target will be externals/<name>/<target>
"target": "src",
//directory and link_name of symlink
"link": "src/lib/amd-utils"
}
]
},
{
"name": "dojo",
"url": "git://github.com/dojo/dojo.git",
"commit": "1.8.2",
"symlinks": [
{
"link": "src/lib/dojo"
}
]
},
{
"name": "deferreds.js",
"url": "git://github.com/zship/deferreds.js.git",
"symlinks": [
{
"link": "src/lib/deferreds"
}
]
}
]Running gitdeps in a git repository's root will:
- Remove submodules not referenced in .gitdeps
- Add submodules referenced in .gitdeps but not existing in the repository
- Update all submodules' HEADs to point to the "commit" specified in .gitdeps
- Clean up orphaned symlinks from previous runs