How to “git clone” including submodules?

Question

I\'m trying to put a submodule into a repo. The problem is that when I clone the parent repo, the submodule folder is entirely empty.

Is there any way to make it so

Answer 1

You can use the --recursive flag when cloning a repository. This parameter forces git to clone all defined submodules in the repository.

git clone --recursive git@repo.org:your_repo.git

After cloning, sometimes submodules branches may be changed, so run this command after it:

git submodule foreach "git checkout master"

Answer 2

I think you can go with 3 steps:

git clone
git submodule init
git submodule update

Answer 3

I had the same problem for a GitHub repository. My account was missing SSH Key. The process is

1. Generate SSH Key
2. Adding a new SSH key to your GitHub account

Then, you can clone the repository with submodules (git clone --recursive YOUR-GIT-REPO-URL)

or

Run git submodule init and git submodule update to fetch submodules in already cloned repository.

Answer 4

With version 2.13 of Git and later, --recurse-submodules can be used instead of --recursive:

git clone --recurse-submodules -j8 git://github.com/foo/bar.git
cd bar

^{Editor’s note: -j8 is an optional performance optimization that became available in version 2.8, and fetches up to 8 submodules at a time in parallel — see man git-clone.}

With version 1.9 of Git up until version 2.12 (-j flag only available in version 2.8+):

git clone --recursive -j8 git://github.com/foo/bar.git
cd bar

With version 1.6.5 of Git and later, you can use:

git clone --recursive git://github.com/foo/bar.git
cd bar

For already cloned repos, or older Git versions, use:

git clone git://github.com/foo/bar.git
cd bar
git submodule update --init --recursive

Answer 5

You have to do two things before a submodule will be filled:

git submodule init 
git submodule update

Answer 6

Try this.

git clone -b <branch_name> --recursive <remote> <directory>

If you have added the submodule in a branch make sure that you add it to the clone command.