List submodules in a Git repository

Question

I have a Git repository that has several submodules in it  How do I list the names of all the submodules after git submodule init has been run   The git submodule foreach command could echo the names of the submodule  but that only works once they have been checked out which has not happened after the init step  There are more steps in the chain that need to happen before they can be checked out  and I don t want to have to hard-wire names of submodules into the script    So is there a Git command to get the names of all currently registered  but not yet checked out submodules

User · Answer

Use     git submodule   It will list all the submodules in the specified Git repository

User · Answer

To get path grep url  gitmodules   sed  s          To get names as in repos grep path  gitmodules   sed  s

User · Answer

In my version of Git  1   every Git submodule has a name and a path  They don t necessarily have to be the same  2   Getting both in a reliable way  without checking out the submodules first  git update --init   is a tricky bit of shell wizardry   Get a list of submodule names  I didn t find a way how to achieve this using git config or any other git command  Therefore we are back to regex on  gitmodules  super ugly   But it seems to be somewhat safe since git limits the possible code space allowed for submodule names  In addition  since you probably want to use this list for further shell processing  the solution below separate entries with NULL-bytes   0      sed -nre      s    submodule             1 x0 p         git rev-parse --show-toplevel   gitmodules      tr -d   n      xargs -0 -n1 printf   b 0    And in your script      usr bin env bash  while IFS  read -rd    submodule name  do   echo submodule name     submodule name   done  lt   lt     sed -nre        s    submodule             1 x0 p           git rev-parse --show-toplevel   gitmodules        tr -d   n        xargs -0 -n1 printf   b 0      Note  read -rd    requires bash and won t work with sh   Get a list of submodule paths  In my approach I try not to process the output from git config --get-regexp with awk  tr  sed      but instead pass it a zero byte separated back to git config --get  This is to avoid problems with newlines  spaces and other special characters  e g  Unicode  in the submodule paths  In addition  since you probably want to use this list for further shell processing  the solution below separate entries with NULL-bytes   0      git config --null --file  gitmodules --name-only --get-regexp    path       xargs -0 -n1 git config --null --file  gitmodules --get   For example  in a Bash script you could then      usr bin env bash  while IFS  read -rd    submodule path  do   echo submodule path     submodule path   done  lt   lt     git config --null --file  gitmodules --name-only --get-regexp    path         xargs -0 -n1 git config --null --file  gitmodules --get     Note  read -rd    requires bash and won t work with sh     Footnotes   1  Git version    git --version git version 2 22 0    2  Submodule with diverging name and path  Set up test repository     git init test-name-path   cd test-name-path    git checkout -b master   git commit --allow-empty -m  test    git submodule add    submodule-name Cloning into   tmp test-name-path submodule-name     done    ls submodule-name    cat  gitmodules  submodule  submodule-name       path   submodule-name     url        Move submodule to make name and path diverge     git mv submodule-name  submodule-path    ls submodule-path    cat  gitmodules  submodule  submodule-name       path   submodule-path     url         git config --file  gitmodules --get-regexp    path   submodule submodule-name path submodule-path   Testing  Set up test repository     git init test   cd test    git checkout -b master   git commit --allow-empty -m  test      git submodule add    simplename Cloning into   tmp test simplename     done      git submodule add     name with spaces  Cloning into   tmp test name with spaces     done      git submodule add     future-name-with-newlines  Cloning into   tmp test future-name-with-newlines     done    git mv future-name-with-newlines   name  gt  with  gt  newlines      git submodule add     name-with-unicode-  Cloning into   tmp test name-with-unicode-     done      git submodule add    sub folder submodule Cloning into   tmp test sub folder submodule     done      git submodule add    name with dots Cloning into   tmp test name with dots     done      git submodule add     name with double quotes  Cloning into   tmp test name with double quotes     done      git submodule add     name with single quotes  Cloning into   tmp test name with single quotes      done    git submodule add     name with brackets  Cloning into   tmp test name with brackets     done    git submodule add     name-with- path  Cloning into   tmp test name-with- path     done     gitmodules    submodule  simplename       path   simplename     url       submodule  name with spaces       path   name with spaces     url       submodule  future-name-with-newlines       path   name nwith nnewlines     url       submodule  name-with-unicode-       path   name-with-unicode-     url       submodule  sub folder submodule       path   sub folder submodule     url       submodule  name with dots       path   name with dots     url       submodule  name  with  double  quotes       path   name  with  double  quotes     url       submodule  name with single quotes       path   name with single quotes     url       submodule  name with brackets       path   name with brackets     url       submodule  name-with- path       path   name-with- path     url        Get list of submodule names    sed -nre      s    submodule             1 x0 p         git rev-parse --show-toplevel   gitmodules      tr -d   n      xargs -0 -n1 printf   b 0      xargs -0 -n1 echo submodule name  submodule name  simplename submodule name  name with spaces submodule name  future-name-with-newlines submodule name  name-with-unicode- submodule name  sub folder submodule submodule name  name with dots submodule name  name with double quotes submodule name  name with single quotes submodule name  name with brackets submodule name  name-with- path   Get list of submodule paths    git config --null --file  gitmodules --name-only --get-regexp    path       xargs -0 -n1 git config --null --file  gitmodules --get     xargs -0 -n1 echo submodule path  submodule path  simplename submodule path  name with spaces submodule path  name with newlines submodule path  name-with-unicode- submodule path  sub folder submodule submodule path  name with dots submodule path  name with double quotes submodule path  name with single quotes submodule path  name with brackets submodule path  name-with- path

User · Answer

I noticed that the command provided in an answer to this question gave me the information I was looking for   No submodule mapping found in  gitmodule for a path that s not a submodule  git ls-files --stage   grep 160000

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You could use the same mechanism as git submodule init uses itself  namely  look at  gitmodules  This files enumerates each submodule path and the URL it refers to   For example  from root of repository  cat  gitmodules will print contents to the screen  assuming you have cat    Because  gitmodule files have the Git configuration format  you can use git config to parse those files   git config --file  gitmodules --name-only --get-regexp path   Would show you all submodule entries  and with  git config --file  gitmodules --get-regexp path   awk    print  2      you would only get the submodule path itself

User · Answer

You can use   git submodule   awk    print  2

User · Answer

This worked for me   git ls-files --stage   grep  160000   It is based on this great article  Understanding Git Submodules  It must read grep  160000

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If you don t mind operating only on initialized submodules  you can use git submodule foreach to avoid text parsing   git submodule foreach --quiet  echo  name

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To return just the names of the registered submodules  you can use this command   grep path  gitmodules   sed  s           Think of it as git submodule --list which doesn t exist

User · Answer

I use this one   git submodule status   cut -d    -f3-4    Output  path   version    tools deploy utils  0 2 4

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Here is another way to parse Git submodule names from  gitmodules without the need for sed or fancy IFS settings   -      bin env bash  function stripStartAndEndQuotes     temp    1        temp    temp        echo   temp     function getSubmoduleNames     line  1   len    line    Get line length   stripStartAndEndQuotes    line  len-1     Remove last character    while read line  do   getSubmoduleNames   line  done  lt   lt  cat  gitmodules   grep    submodule        cut -d     -f 2-

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The following command will list the submodules   git submodule--helper list   The output is something like this    lt mode gt   lt sha1 gt   lt stage gt   lt location gt    Note  It requires Git 2 7 0 or above

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Just the submodule paths please  ma am      git config --list   grep   submodule   cut -f 2 -d      Vendor BaseModel Vendor ObjectMatcher Vendor OrderedDictionary Vendor  ObjC Vendor XCodeHelpers

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To list all submodules by name   git submodule --quiet foreach --recursive  echo  name

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git config allows to specify a config file  And  gitmodules is a config file   So  with the help of  use space as a delimiter with cut command    git config --file  gitmodules --get-regexp   submodule    path    cut -d     -f 2   That will list only the paths  one per declared submodule   As Tino points out in the comments         This fails for submodules with spaces in it     submodule paths may contain newlines  as in  git submodule add https   github com hilbix bashy git  sub module    git mv  sub module    sub nmodule        As a more robust alternative  Tino proposes     git config -z --file  gitmodules --get-regexp    path         sed -nz  s     n   n  p        tr   0    n         For paths with newlines in them  they can be created with git mv   leave away the   tr   0    n  and use something like       while IFS    read -d    path  do     for further processing with bash    This needs a modern bash which understands read -d     do not forget the space between -d and

User · Answer

If there isn t any  gitmodules file  but a submodules configuration exists in  git modules    find  git modules  -name config -exec grep url

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Display ALL info about each submodule using built-in git functions  git submodule foreach -q git config -l  Or just URL-s  git submodule foreach -q git config remote origin url  Stolen from here

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I use this    git config --list egrep  submodule

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You can use git submodule status or optionally git submodule status --recursive if you want to show nested submodules   From the Git documentation      Show the status of the submodules  This will print the SHA-1 of the   currently checked out commit for each submodule  along with the   submodule path and the output of git describe for the SHA-1  Each   SHA-1 will be prefixed with - if the submodule is not initialized      if the currently checked out submodule commit does not match the SHA-1   found in the index of the containing repository and U if the submodule   has merge conflicts

[git] List submodules in a Git repository

Examples related to git

Examples related to git-submodules