Only check commonlib, don't try to split the response into segments (as @mhl points out, the case where the initial character is a space is somewhat confusing), just grab the first character of the whole string and check it against expected values.

1 files changed, 8 insertions, 7 deletions

diff --git a/lib/tasks/submodules.rake b/lib/tasks/submodules.rake
index 1112e443e..426192713 100644
--- a/lib/tasks/submodules.rake
+++ b/lib/tasks/submodules.rake
@@ -3,24 +3,25 @@ namespace :submodules do
 
     desc "Check the status of the project's submodules"
     task :check => :environment do
-        commit_info = `git submodule status`
-        sha, repo, branch = commit_info.split(' ')
-        case sha[0,1]
+        commit_info = `git submodule status commonlib`
+        case commit_info[0,1]
         when '+'
-            $stderr.puts "Error: Currently checked out submodule commit for #{repo}"
+            $stderr.puts "Error: Currently checked out submodule commit for commonlib"
             $stderr.puts "does not match the commit expected by this version of Alaveteli."
             $stderr.puts "You can update it with 'git submodule update'."
             exit(1)
         when '-'
-            $stderr.puts "Error: Submodule #{repo} needs to be initialized."
+            $stderr.puts "Error: Submodule commonlib needs to be initialized."
             $stderr.puts "You can do this by running 'git submodule update --init'."
             exit(1)
         when 'U'
-            $stderr.puts "Error: Submodule #{repo} has merge conflicts."
+            $stderr.puts "Error: Submodule commonlib has merge conflicts."
             $stderr.puts "You'll need to resolve these to run Alaveteli."
             exit(1)
-        else
+        when ' '
             exit(0)
+        else
+            raise "Unexpected status character in response to 'git submodule status commonlib': #{commit_info[0,1]}"
         end
     end