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I have been handed a project from someone else and I am having a hard time to get the repo up and running. It might sound very basic but here is my question:

so I clone the project and I need to do 

git submodule init
git submodule update

and it creates link to external repositories which this project is based on. Now if I want to keep the last version of this code and erase the .git (because we will release it to public soon and don't want to share our git footprints) and still have the "git submodule" working, what do I need to do? In the project folder in addition to the .git, there is a file called ".gitmodules" which contains the links to the external repositories. But when I "rm -rf .git" and do a fresh git init to initialize a fresh git copy, the "git submodule init" and "git submodule update" don't do anything. Should I do something else to make a link between the .git and the ".gitmodules" file that I kept in the folder?

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  • do you want to totally remove the submodule? @user3639557 Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 15:41
  • No. I just want to erase the .git directory, and create a new git and use the git submodule as before. Commented Sep 3, 2015 at 15:43

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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If you delete your .git directory and create a new one with git init, you will need to run git submodule add to re-register the submodules. E.g., here we have a repository with some submodules:

bash-4.3$ git submodule
 460317a37795e0751ecc788e571a11fc1a908079 bar (heads/master)
 460317a37795e0751ecc788e571a11fc1a908079 foo (heads/master)

If we delete our git history and re-intiialize the repository:

bash-4.3$ rm -rf .git
bash-4.3$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/lars/tmp/repo/.git/

At this point, git sees no submodules:

bash-4.3$ git submodule
bash-4.3$

Even though they are still there:

bash-4.3$ ls
bar  foo

We can re-register them using git submodule add:

bash-4.3$ git submodule add git@myserver:path/to/repo/foo foo
Adding existing repo at 'foo' to the index
bash-4.3$ git submodule add git@myserver:path/to/repo/bar bar
Adding existing repo at 'bar' to the index

And they're back:

bash-4.3$ git submodule
 460317a37795e0751ecc788e571a11fc1a908079 bar (heads/master)
 460317a37795e0751ecc788e571a11fc1a908079 foo (heads/master)
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4 Comments

this is the answer I was looking for. Now is there a way to just create the git submodule link and not actually download them into the new repository. I mean, such that everytime someone clones it, he needs to run "git submodule init" and "git submodule update" to get the external repo? Currently "git submodule add" downloads the external repository into the project.
I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. Yes, git submodule add downloads the external repository into your local working copy, but the only thing stored in the repository itself is a pointer. If you were to git clone the repository, the submodules would not be present (unless you cloned with --recursive) until you run git submodule init; git submodule update in your local working copy.
I see. So if I add the submodules and then commit the current repo with all the submodules in the local version and push it, they won't be added to the repository. right?
The submodules will be added to the repository as "pointers" but will not be realized unless explicitly requested. The best thing to do is probably just to test it...make a local clone of your repository (git clone myrepo myrepo-test) and see what you get.
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To remove/erase the .git directory, just delete the .git directory and init again.

(Once you delete the .git folder submodules' commands will not work, since the .gitmodules is deleted along with the .git folder) now you will have achieved your task 1: erase the git directory

To add the submodule to the repository use the commands git submodule add

example: git submodule add https://github.com/chaconinc/DbConnector

If you run git status at this point, you’ll notice a few things. First you should notice the new .gitmodules file. This is a configuration file that stores the mapping between the project’s URL and the local subdirectory you’ve pulled it into.

(If you have multiple submodules, you’ll have multiple entries in this file. It’s important to note that this file is version-controlled with your other files, like your .gitignore file. It’s pushed and pulled with the rest of your project. This is how other people who clone this project know where to get the submodule projects from.)

Now, you will have achieved your task 2: use the submodules as before.

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