submarine/docs/requirements.md

Requirements

Problem

In repositories with many submodules, git submodule status shows pinned commit hashes. It doesn't answer the questions users actually have:

• Which branch is this submodule on, and is the pin current?
• Which submodules need my attention, and which are fine?
• Is anything dangerous, e.g. a pin that other people can't fetch?

Goals

• Show only submodules (not files), recursively nested, as a tree.
• Describe pins as ref + distance instead of a commit hash.
• Let problems stand out and keep healthy submodules quiet.
• Work comfortably with dozens to hundreds of submodules.

Functional requirements

Tree

• F1 Show all submodules of the superproject, including nested submodules of submodules, at any depth.
• F2 Group submodules by the directory of their path relative to the parent repository. A directory with submodules is shown as a non-selectable header line (e.g. src/, modules/). Submodules at the repository root have no header.
• F3 Nested submodules are shown under their parent submodule. A directory header inside a submodule (e.g. modules/) means the nested submodule lives in that subdirectory of the parent.
• F4 On startup only the first level is shown; every submodule with nested submodules is collapsed.
• F5 A collapsed submodule shows the number of its direct children, e.g. [2].
• F6 A collapsed submodule shows the number of issues hidden in all its descendants (·2), colored by the most severe hidden issue.
• F7 Expansion state of descendants is remembered when a parent is collapsed and restored when it is expanded again (except after "collapse all", which resets it).

State per submodule

• F10 Each submodule shows at most one state word: the most severe issue, plus +n if there are more. Submodules without issues show a muted in sync. See state-model.md for the full rules.
• F11 Each submodule shows its pin as a ref (origin/main, a tag, or a short SHA as a fallback) and the distance to that ref (↑n, ↓n, ↑n↓m).
• F12 A pin that is not reachable from any remote ref ("unpushed") is the most prominent state.
• F13 States load asynchronously per submodule; a submodule shows a spinner until its state is known. Loading errors are shown as error.

Detail pane

• F20 Shows the selected submodule: full path, name, all issues in words, staged-pin and detached-HEAD notes.
• F21 Shows the resolved ref, how it was resolved, and three commits: Pinned, Checkout and Tip (SHA + subject). A checkout that differs from the pin is highlighted.
• F22 Lists the commits between pin and tip (SHA, subject, author, age) with a title stating ahead/behind/diverged.
• F23 Shows child count, issues below, and the remote URL.
• F24 For a submodule with uncommitted changes, previews the changed files so the user can remember what they were doing: a flat list with a colored letter per file (M modified, A added, D removed, R renamed, ? untracked, ! conflict), line counts (+n −m) per file and in total, and how long ago each file was edited. Only a handful of files are shown; the rest is summarized as "n more" with their kinds. Staged and unstaged changes are combined.

Header and footer

• F30 The header shows the superproject path, its branch and ahead/behind, the number of submodules, a count per issue kind (most severe first), staged pins, how many are still loading, and the time since the last fetch.
• F31 The footer shows key hints; ? toggles the full help. It temporarily shows short messages (e.g. "not implemented").

Navigation

• F40 Keyboard navigation as specified in ux-guide.md.
• F41 Mouse: click a row to select it, click ▸/▾ to toggle, scroll wheel moves the selection.

Fetch and refresh

• F50 On startup, after the local state is shown, the superproject and every initialized submodule are fetched in the background (all remotes, with prune). --no-fetch turns this off.
• F51 While fetching, the header shows progress (fetching 12/174) instead of the fetch age; afterwards the age and the number of failed fetches. The detail pane shows each submodule's last fetch and, if it failed, git's message.
• F52 The view follows changes in the repositories, no matter who made them: a fetch, commit, checkout or git add in another shell shows up within about two seconds. Refreshing is driven by the repositories, not by the application's own fetch.
• F53 f fetches again; r reloads everything (e.g. after editing files, which is not watched).

Actions (planned, not implemented)

Key	Action
u	Check out the pinned commit (git submodule update)
b	Bump the pin to the tip of its ref
/	Filter by name/path
!	Show only submodules with issues

Usage

submarine [dir]     # the repository containing dir (default: current directory)
submarine --mock    # built-in mock data
submarine --no-fetch [dir]   # no background fetch on startup

Non-functional requirements

• N1 Startup must not block on the network. The tool shows the local state at once and fetches in the background (F50).
• N2 Loading many submodules must not freeze the UI (async, per submodule).
• N3 Colors follow the user's terminal theme (ANSI 16 colors); the UI works on dark and light backgrounds.
• N4 Meaning never depends on color alone: every state has a word.
• N5 Works without a Nerd Font. SUBMARINE_ASCII=1 replaces the few remaining Unicode symbols with ASCII.
• N6 Works in narrow terminals (detail pane hides below 90 columns).
• N7 The UI is independent of the data source: the mock and the git provider are interchangeable without UI changes.
• N8 The git provider only uses the network in Fetch, and never prompts (no password, passphrase or host-key questions; those fetches fail with git's message). It uses the git command line, so the user's git configuration applies. Apart from fetching, it is read-only.