Git checkout for submodules not working for WordPress

Question

I have WordPress as a git submodule and it is checked out at tag 3.8.1.

I want to get the latest version of WordPress which is 3.8.2.

I have done the following structure:

/html
    /wp - submodule to WordPress

I then run the following commands:

$ cd wp
$ git checkout 3.8.2
Previous HEAD position was 22bb602... Tag 3.8.1
HEAD is now at 5577e02... Tag 3.8.2

However when I go and check the WordPress dashboard it still tells me that I still need to update to 3.8.2.

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 10 '14 at 15:59

1

3.8.2 is actually a tag, not a branch. It points to a specific commit. Pulling makes no sense there.

If you want to stay up-to-date with the 3.8 version use the branch 3.8-branch.

$ git checkout 3.8-branch
$ git pull

answered Apr 10 '14 at 15:59

iltempo

15,718
8
61
72

Thanks for this - that makes sense for the git pull. But I think I shouldn't even need the git pull. I should only need the `git checkout 3.8.2`. According to this SO answer (http://stackoverflow.com/a/4330627/327074) the `git checkout 3.8.2` should change all the files. But once you've done a checkout to a tag, how do you then do a checkout to another tag? – icc97 Apr 10 '14 at 21:20
sorry forgive me - its acutally something completely different. I thought that the `git checkout 3.8.2` wasn't doing anything but it looks like it was. The issue is a problem with trying to use the github version of WordPress for a translated version of WordPress. It keeps giving you a message saying that the software hasn't been updated until you modify the core wp-includes/version.php file to add in a line that matches the translated version of WordPress – icc97 Apr 10 '14 at 21:34

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 10 '14 at 21:48

This was a complete red herring. The git checkout 3.8.2 was working. But I hadn't properly checked the file changes and there's no such indication that the files have been updated as when you do a git pull.

However the WordPress dashboard was thinking that I was not on the latest version because I am using a dutch translated version of WordPress.

So in the wp-config.php I have define( 'WPLANG', 'nl_NL' );

This then requires that you are using the nl-NL installation of WordPress from e.g. https://downloads.wordpress.org/release/nl_NL/wordpress-3.8.2.zip

However because I am using the github version of WordPress, that only has the US English version of WordPress. Its a hack, but to fix the problem I just edited the wp-includes/version.php file, to include the following line at the bottom, which is the only file that differs in the WordPress core for the translated version:

$wp_local_package = 'nl_NL';

Then WordPress is happy that you have the latest version.

Then you have to pull in the translation files.

Git checkout for submodules not working for WordPress

2 Answers2