Created attachment 1621 [details] Yocto IRC log where problem was discussed. The Git submodule fetcher (gitsm.py) has a dependency on the version of Git installed on the development platform. Specifically it requires a version of Git that includes this patch (https://github.com/git/git/commit/d75219b). The problem is that versions of Git prior to the patch has absolute paths hard-coded into each .git/modules/<mod_name>/config file (see "worktree" variable). The gitsm.py fetcher copies the modules directory from the repo in the downloads directory to the work directory before doing a "git submodule update" that subsequently fails in "unpack()" since this original temp repo is removed as the last statement of "update_submodules()". Either everyone needs to be aware of this dependency or the fetcher needs to be modified to correct each module's config file (e.g. "worktree" variable) if the version of Git installed does not contain the above patch. Right now, Ubuntu 12.04 (LTS) is only using Git 1.7.9.5 so it will fail fetching using this fetcher. This has been discussed on the Yocto IRC where it was discovered and independently confirmed. I've attached the transcript.
Fix merged to master: http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/poky/commit/?id=957c9a80bc698845475591912c8cb6ae42077d19 I've also added a test for the gitsm fetcher to bitbake-selftest.