Is it possible to make Git aware of an existing .gitmodules file?

Question

I added a submodule:

git submodule add git://github.com/chneukirchen/rack.git rack

A file .gitmodules was created like:

Answer 1

You need to run

git submodule update --init --recursive 

UPDATE:

the submodule add command actually clones the entire repo and adds the sha1 to the index.

This may be new behaviour as compared to previous versions of git, the clone was not done immediately.

If you don't have an entry in the index pointing the module to a particular commit, git submodule update refuses to do anything. This seems to be new behaviour.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

Ok, so thanks to Adam I found the answer, was kind of obvious but nevertheless, here it is:

If you check what git submodule add does, you'd notice that it does three things:

1. Adds the lines to the .gitmodules file,
2. Clones the repo in the 'path' you determined in the command, and
3. Adds the module to the .git/config file.

So, basically the only difference between a repo with a submodule added by hand and the one added via the git submodule command is the contents of the repo itself.

Answering with the same example, you should:

$ git clone git://github.com/jgarber/redcloth.git plugins/redcloth

Add the following to the .git/config file*:

[submodule "redcloth"]
url = git://github.com/jgarber/redcloth.git

Make sure at least you add them to the git repo:

$ git add plugins/redcloth

And then check if git actually is "aware":

$ git submodule status
0766810ab46f1ed12817c48746e867775609bde8 plugins/redcloth (v4.2.8)
30fb044db6ba5ea874ebc44a43bbd80a42676405 rack (1.3.0-64-g30fb044)

*note that the "path" variable you use in the .gitmodules file isn't needed in that file