Ah, OK. Now I got you.
Let me quote the "--submodules" flag option help text:
Whether or not to include git submodules from SCM commit log since a given parent revision (see changesrevision). Use 'master' to fetch the latest master.
As you can see -- even though the wording may sound a bit confusing --, using "master" will pull the master branch of the _submodules_ instead of the pinned commit hash. As an example, let's take a look at sharkdp's bat CLI tool, a replacement for the cat tool [2]:
The v0.18.0 revision tree, under assets/syntaxes subdir [3], we have "01_Packages @ 759d6ee". The pinned commit hash there is "759d6ee" [4], opposed to the, now latest (2022-11-30), in master "6371a1b" [5].
In other words, it's a way to "update" out of date submodules while sacrificing reliability, since the pinned commit ID is what most people will use/test after using `git clone ...`.
Kind regards,
Luciano
[1] https://github.com/openSUSE/obs-service-tar_scm/blob/026bf0e08d904f092e7dbdb...
[2] https://github.com/sharkdp/bat
[3] https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/tree/v0.18.0/assets/syntaxes
[4] https://github.com/sublimehq/Packages/tree/759d6eed9b4beed87e602a23303a121c3...
[5] https://github.com/sublimehq/Packages/commit/6371a1bbf66ab0e0c57d179d0d5fb70...
________________________________________
From: liuxueping.snow@bytedance.com