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gitvimgit-submodulespathogen

Using git submodules with my own repo

I'm newbie in git, so question may be really stupid, sorry for that. I mean, I even found here on stackoverflow questions pretty close to mine, but still don't understand how to solve problem correctly.

I have github repo with my dotfiles, including for vim. I'm using pathogen with vim, so natural way to get plugins seams to be

git submodule add https://github.com/msanders/snipmate.vim.git vim/bundle/snipmate
...
git submodule init
git submodule update
git submodule foreach git submodule init
git submodule foreach git submodule update

wich I found somewhere. Last four commands I simply added to my setup script to run every time I clone this repo.

The first problem is git status always shows me 

# modified:   vim/bundle/snipmate (untracked content)
# ...

in the # Changed but not updated: section and git add vim/bundle/snipmate doesn't help. It is pretty annoying.

The second problem is I obviously don't wand to keep snipmate snippets as default, I want to change them, and because of pathogen snippets are stored in snipmate folder, which is submodule, not my own repo. Of course, I could simply clone them there, or even create a fork of some of them, but is doesn't seem like a good solution:

  • It messes up my own code with other's code can be found on github;
  • I'm not really going to modify snipmate, I'm going to configure it;
  • All that stuff makes complicated or even impossible to update thirty-part plugins.

Maybe someone could help with finding a "correct" answer?

Solution

  • You could start by reading snipmate's doc which states that the default recommended location for your own snippets is (supposing your stuff is under ~/.vim) ~/.vim/snippets/<filetype>.snippets. Outside of the plugin's directory, outside of the submodule.

    Yes Git submodules are cool but they are probably not the perfect solution for managing your Vim config.