CODEWITHSUNDEEP
gitdependenciesgit-submodulesdependency-managementivy
Slaknation
Slaknation

Reputation: 1926

Git submodules vs dependency management?

Where I work, we use a tool called apache Ivy for dependency management. However, I have recently been working on a project of my own with multiple repositories, therefore, I am using a git superproject to maintain all of them. The git submodules has been great for me and so far I strongly prefer them over Ivy. Here are the main things I like about them over Ivy:

However, my company refuses to touch git submodules/superprojects. I have also been doing some research and it appears that a lot of people do not like git submodules and it is not considered good as a "dependency management" tool. Can anyone help me understand why?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 4774

Answers (1)

Gonzalo Matheu
Gonzalo Matheu

Reputation: 10064

Probably the killer feature of dependency managers like Apache Ivy is transitive dependencies resolution and conflict management. This is not doable using git submodules.

From Apache Ivy features page:

Imagine a component that's often reused by a software team, and that this component has dependencies of its own. Without a good dependency management tool, each time this component is reused, all its dependencies must be repeated. With Apache Ivy, it's different: simply write a dependency file once for the component, and benefit from the work already done anytime this component is reuse.

Another features that I consider important are:

  • downloads already compiled packages, instead of having to compile them every time

  • dependencies reports

That all said, I would only suggest git submodules when your dependency tree is shallow and compiling dependencies code is cheap.

Upvotes: 6

Related Questions