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how close is git-subtree to svn-externals? I've always had people complain about moving from svn to git because there wasn't a feature like svn-externals. git-s

• TheHippo 13y ago
  In my opinion it's way better then submodule or svn-externals. Basically it allows you to take an specific folder from your repository and push only this folder to an additional repository. This repository could be included into another repository which makes sharing code between repositories very easy while keeping history in each of them and the history for this special folder in an extra repository.
• stormbrew 13y ago
  It's kind of difficult to compare. I actually think of submodules as being much closer to svn externals in nature, just very poorly integrated (I'm not sure anyone on the git core team actually uses submodules, in things I've read as justification for its poor implementation from core team members it seems like they only added it as a checkbox feature). Subtrees are quite different from either. They make the imported repository literally a part of the commit graph of the parent tree through a subtree-merge-commit. It then does some extra work to help you bring in new changes or export new changes back. I think it's a better approach than either, but it's also not exactly the same thing, basically.