GIT SUBMODULE ADD BRANCH EXAMPLE HOW TO

It’s important to understand that the repository which contains a submodule knows very little about it except for which version it should be and various bits of information about how to update it. (I’ll sometimes refer to the whatdotheyknow repository as the super-project, which I hope is clear.) In each project the commonlib repository has been added as a submodule. The example I’m going to use in this post however, called whatdotheyknow, is one of the various mySociety projects that depend on a repository called commonlib, which contains useful code common to at least one project. For example, if you’re developing a new Ruby-on-Rails application, you could add a clearly specified version of the Rails repository as a submodule at the path vendor/rails.

This is a useful feature when you have a project in git which depends on a particular versions of other projects. What are submodules?Ī submodule in a git repository is like a sub-directory which is really a separate git repository in its own right.

Submodules in git are commonly misunderstood in various ways, and although the explanation in the official manual is clear and pretty easy to understand, I thought that a different treatment here might be useful to someone. I haven’t actually finished the FAQ bit of this post yet, but since I’m not sure when I’ll have time to do so, I’ll just publish it anyway – please let me know in the comments if this is useful for you, or there’s something else you’d like to see included.

Git submodule add branch example