How to clone a git repository with submodules init and update

Git clone with submodules

The list of steps required to clone a Git repository with submodules is:

1. Issue a git clone command on the parent repository
2. Issue a git submodule init command
3. Issue a git submodule update command

The git submodule init and update commands are needed to pull down submodule artifacts and resources.

When these three steps are complete, both the parent repository and all submodules will be available locally, and files from the master branch of the parent repository and the submodule will be available in their respective git working trees.

Git init and update alternative

There is actually an alternative go going through these three steps. You can alternatively use the –recurse-submodules switch on the clone. That might be easier.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/cameronmcnz/surface.git 

Git submodule clone

The commands issued to clone the git repository and all submodules are:

submodule@example:~$ git clone https://github.com/cameronmcnz/surface.git
submodule@example:~$ git submodule init
submodule@example:~$ git submodule update

The clone operation will obviously happen after multiple repositories have been created and submodules added to them. For more information on how to perform other git submodule operations, check out our full listing of ‘git submodule how to‘ tutorials.

You can find both of these repositories on GitHub and GitLab.

Become a Git power user

Want to become a Git power user? Take a look at the following Git articles and tutorials

• How to do a Git clean up of branches and commits
• Learn to rebase onto master and rebase from the master branch
• Squash all Git commits on a branch down to one
• Shelve your changes with Git stash pop and apply
• Easily explain the  Git vs GitHub difference
• Add a shallow git clone of depth 1 do your Jenkins jobs
• Set up a local Git server with a bare Git repo