Return type mismatch in repo.submodule_update()

Hello everyone! repo.submodule_update is annotated to return an Iterator[Submodule] (and I hoped it might return an iterator of modified modules or something similar).

GitPython/git/repo/base.py

Lines 523 to 531 in ba5c10d

    
               def submodule_update(self, *args: Any, **kwargs: Any) -> Iterator[Submodule]: 
        
                   """Update the submodules, keeping the repository consistent as it will 
        
                   take the previous state into consideration. 
        
                   :note: 
        
                       For more information, please see the documentation of 
        
                       :meth:`RootModule.update <git.objects.submodule.root.RootModule.update>`. 
        
                   """ 
        
                   return RootModule(self).update(*args, **kwargs)

However, RootModule.update just returns self (type RootModule):

GitPython/git/objects/submodule/root.py

Lines 79 to 90 in ba5c10d

    
           def update(  # type: ignore[override] 
        
               self, 
        
               previous_commit: Union[Commit_ish, str, None] = None, 
        
               recursive: bool = True, 
        
               force_remove: bool = False, 
        
               init: bool = True, 
        
               to_latest_revision: bool = False, 
        
               progress: Union[None, "RootUpdateProgress"] = None, 
        
               dry_run: bool = False, 
        
               force_reset: bool = False, 
        
               keep_going: bool = False, 
        
           ) -> "RootModule":

Thanks for reporting.

Unfortunately the implementation uses a strange and unnecessary OOM abstraction which makes everything harder to understand. This is probably also the reason the type is off here.

The best fix would certainly be if there was no RootSubmodule at all. But maybe there is also a simple type-based fix that already helps.

To me it looks like the return type might have been introduced as a copy and paste bug from the method right above it:

GitPython/git/repo/base.py

Line 512 in ba5c10d

def iter_submodules(self, *args: Any, **kwargs: Any) -> Iterator[Submodule]:

The most important problem with the type mismatch is that the value returned by update is not iterable at all. :-)

Use actual return type in annotation for method submodule_update

Please merge my PR if you agree or just close it otherwise. ;-)

Navigation Menu

Repository navigation

Return type mismatch in repo.submodule_update() #2077

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

	def submodule_update(self, args: Any, *kwargs: Any) -> Iterator[Submodule]:
	"""Update the submodules, keeping the repository consistent as it will
	take the previous state into consideration.

	:note:
	For more information, please see the documentation of
	:meth:`RootModule.update <git.objects.submodule.root.RootModule.update>`.
	"""
	return RootModule(self).update(args, *kwargs)

	def update( # type: ignore[override]
	self,
	previous_commit: Union[Commit_ish, str, None] = None,
	recursive: bool = True,
	force_remove: bool = False,
	init: bool = True,
	to_latest_revision: bool = False,
	progress: Union[None, "RootUpdateProgress"] = None,
	dry_run: bool = False,
	force_reset: bool = False,
	keep_going: bool = False,
	) -> "RootModule":

Return type mismatch in repo.submodule_update() #2077

Description

Activity

Byron commented on Oct 21, 2025

extrwi commented on Oct 21, 2025

extrwi commented on Oct 21, 2025

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Issue actions