doc: clarify description of 'submodule.recurse'

phil-blain · gitster · commit 878b39973455 · 2021-07-20T14:57:43.000-07:00
The doc for 'submodule.recurse' starts with "Specifies if commands recurse into submodles by default". This is not exactly true of all commands that have a '--recurse-submodules' option. For example, 'git pull --recurse-submodules' does not run 'git pull' in each submodule, but rather runs 'git submodule update --recursive' so that the submodule working trees after the pull matches the commits recorded in the superproject. Clarify that by just saying that it enables '--recurse-submodules'. Note that the way this setting interacts with 'fetch.recurseSubmodules' and 'push.recurseSubmodules', which can have other values than true or false, is already documented since 4da9e99 (doc: be more precise on (fetch|push).recurseSubmodules, 2020-04-06). Signed-off-by: Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
diff --git a/Documentation/config/submodule.txt b/Documentation/config/submodule.txt
@@ -58,8 +58,9 @@ submodule.active::
 	commands. See linkgit:gitsubmodules[7] for details.
 
 submodule.recurse::
-	Specifies if commands recurse into submodules by default. This
-	applies to all commands that have a `--recurse-submodules` option
+	A boolean indicating if commands should enable the `--recurse-submodules`
+	option by default.
+	Applies to all commands that support this option
 	(`checkout`, `fetch`, `grep`, `pull`, `push`, `read-tree`, `reset`,
 	`restore` and `switch`) except `clone` and `ls-files`.
 	Defaults to false.
