At the end of filter-branch in a non-bare repository, the work tree is
updated with "read-tree -m -u HEAD", to carry the change forward in case
the current branch was rewritten. In order to avoid losing any local
change during this step, filter-branch refuses to work when there are
local changes in the work tree.
This "read-tree -m -u HEAD" operation does not affect what commit is
checked out in a submodule (iow, it does not touch .git/HEAD in a
submodule checkout), and checking if there is any local change to the
submodule is not useful.
Staged submodules _are_ considered to be 'dirty', however, as the
"read-tree -m -u HEAD" could result in loss of staged information
otherwise.
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>