git submodule modified files status

Question

I\'ve added a submodule in my main git folder tree and haven\'t changed anything but it\'s showing up modified. What do I do about this?

$ git status
# On branc         


        

Answer 1

I used the following git command to resolve this problem:

git submodule update --init  --recursive

Answer 2

The way that the status of git submodules is reported has changed a lot over recent versions of git, so you should really include the output of git --version as well for us to be able to help accurately.

However, in any case, the output of git diff example.com/soundmanager should tell you more. If you see output with the same commit name, but with -dirty added to the new version, e.g.:

diff --git a/example.com/soundmanager b/example.com/soundmanager
--- a/example.com/soundmanager
+++ b/example.com/soundmanager
@@ -1 +1 @@
-Subproject commit c5c6bbaf616d64fbd873df7b7feecebb81b5aee7
+Subproject commit c5c6bbaf616d64fbd873df7b7feecebb81b5aee7-dirty

... than that means that git status in the submodule isn't clean - try cd example.com/soundmanager and then git status to see what's going on.

On the other hand, if you see different commit versions, e.g.:

diff --git a/example.com/soundmanager b/example.com/soundmanager
index c4478af..c79d9c8 160000
--- a/example.com/soundmanager
+++ b/example.com/soundmanager
@@ -1 +1 @@
-Subproject commit c4478af032e604bed605e82d04a248d75fa513f7
+Subproject commit c79d9c83c2864665ca3fd0b11e20a53716d0cbb0

... that means that the version that your submodule is at (i.e. what you see from cd example.com/soundmanager && git show HEAD) is different from the version committed in the main project's tree (i.e. what you see from git rev-parse HEAD:example.com/soundmanager). If the former is right, you should add and commit the new version of the submodule in your main project, with something like:

git add example.com/soundmanager
git commit -m "Update the soundmanager submodule"

On the other hand, if the latter is what you want, you can change the version that the submodule is at with:

git submodule update example.com/soundmanager

Answer 3

I got in this state by mistakenly adding a submodule by specifically adding a directory instead of just adding the content of a new directory.

I needed just to remove the submodule like this:

git rm --cached path/to/my/new_directory

And then add the contents like I intended to in the first place:

git add path/to/my/new_directory/*