SVN's svn:externals To GIT's Submodule
mcnazar writes "Do you manage your Rails Plugins via svn:externals? Thinking of switching to Git but are concerned that Git lacks a direct equivalent of svn:externals? In this article I present a work-around or even IMHO a better solution than SVN's svn:externals."
Branching is easy. Merging them together again... well... What SVN lacks is merge tracking (a la ClearCase, for example - which is otherwise a horrible product, but that's not the point here). They plan to introduce it in 1.5, though.
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Its a very informative and quite funny talk actually. Google Video host another GIT video here.
Proper merge tracking has been on the "we plan to introduce it" list for Subversion since well before 1.0, along with a few other things that most strongly-formal customers expect from version control systems (like useful history tracking/recovery in the face of file renames; issue #928). At least they claim merge tracking is actually on trunk now (issue #820) -- I'll believe it works decently when I see it.
You are correct in that Git does not support partial checkouts. This has been the biggest hurdle in my SVN to Git transition. Yes it is a pain but the benefits I gain (disconnected development from my SVN respository whilst off the network) makes up for this.
Merge tracking is the main feature of 1.5, which, according to this guy, is in beta right now. He does a demo of it too.