[lmi] Using Git submodules for the dependencies

[Vadim Zeitlin]

 Hello,

 Another issue which arose again when thinking about the Linux build is
that of getting the sources of various dependencies. We already have the
existing install_xxx.{make,sh} scripts that do it, of course, and it
probably shouldn't even take much, if anything, to make them work under
Linux, but I can't help wondering why do we reimplement something that Git
can perfectly well to do on its own.

 Because the "git sources" (and, optional, "apply patches") part(s) of
these scripts is exactly what Git submodules do: instead of embedding the
SHA-1 of the commit to get into, say, wx_commit_sha in install_wx.sh, we
could simply have a Git submodule with its SHA-1 stored by Git itself.

 I know that some people are allergic to Git submodules, and while I
believe that they're not nearly as bad as their reputation is (the
reputation created by the submodules initial implementation in the old Git
versions, which indeed suffered from quite a few problem, I should add), I
can't really argue with a medical condition. But unless you're already very
sure that you don't want to use them, could I perhaps convince you to give
them a try? We would need to discuss some details if we decide to do this
(notably, both the submodules location on the local system and their remote
URLs), but the switch itself should be quite painless: we'd basically just
remove a big chunk of the install_xxx.* files and just use

   git clone --recurse-submodules git://git.savannah.nongnu.org/lmi.git 

instead of a simple "git clone git://git.savannah.nongnu.org/lmi.git" in
install_msw.sh.

 What do you think?
VZ

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