Hi Nathan, thanks a lot for providing the python script. I would love to use but get a python syntax error in line 85 on the ":=" syntax:

git-partial-submodule.py add https://github.com/nlohmann... 3rd
File "D:\develop\projects\git\testsparse\git-partial-submodule.py", line 85
if m := re.match(r'git version (\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)', ReadGitOutput('--version')):
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

I use python 3.11.1.0 in a portable windows version and am not familiar with python.

Any help is highly appriciated.

Stefan

Hi Stefan, sorry, no idea. The ":=" syntax was added in Python 3.8. It works for me under Python 3.11.2. I'd double check that the script has not gotten corrupted somehow when you downloaded it.

Thanks for checking. Windows command prompt called some older version of python on my installation. Prefixing the call with python now works.
I had to figure out how to use the script as it was not clear that you first have to clone the project non-recursively first and then, from within the project, call git-sparse-submodule.py clone.
I first tried to clone the whole project with your script. I also misunderstood your statement "When cloning a repository with existing submodules, you use git-partial-submodule.py clone instead of recursively cloning or git submodule update --init." because I thought that "git submodule update --init" would also work. Maybe you change the "or" to "nor" to avoid confusion.
But now it works for my test project to have a sparse submodule just checking out "nlohmann/include" from nlohmann json.
It is a pity that the unsupported submodule updates do stall what might cause confusion if you have a larger user base.
Hope to see your script to be integrated into git soon.