Update Git submodule to latest commit on origin

Question

I have a project with a Git submodule  It is from an ssh       URL  and is on commit A  Commit B has been pushed to that URL  and I want the submodule to retrieve the commit  and change to it   Now  my understanding is that git submodule update should do this  but it doesn t  It doesn t do anything  no output  success exit code   Here s an example     mkdir foo   cd foo   git init   Initialized empty Git repository in      foo  git    git submodule add ssh   user host git mod mod Cloning into mod    user host s password  hunter2 remote  Counting objects  131  done  remote  Compressing objects  100   115 115   done  remote  Total 131  delta 54   reused 0  delta 0  Receiving objects  100   131 131   16 16 KiB  done  Resolving deltas  100   54 54   done    git commit -m  Hello world    master  root-commit  565b235  Hello world   2 files changed  4 insertions     0 deletions -   create mode 100644  gitmodules  create mode 160000 mod   At this point  ssh   user host git mod changes  submodule needs to change too    git submodule init Submodule  mod   ssh   user host git mod  registered for path  mod    git submodule update   git submodule sync Synchronizing submodule url for  mod    git submodule update   man git-submodule    git submodule update --rebase   git submodule update   echo    0   git status   On branch master nothing to commit  working directory clean    git submodule update mod         I ve also tried git fetch mod  which appears to do a fetch  but can t possibly  because it s not prompting for a password    but git log and git show deny the existence of new commits  Thus far I ve just been rm-ing the module and re-adding it  but this is both wrong in principle and tedious in practice

User · Answer

If you don t know the host branch  make this   git submodule foreach git pull origin   git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD    It will get a branch of the main Git repository and then for each submodule will make a pull of the same branch

User · Answer

In your project parent directory  run   git submodule update --init   Or if you have recursive submodules run   git submodule update --init --recursive   Sometimes this still doesn t work  because somehow you have local changes in the local submodule directory while the submodule is being updated   Most of the time the local change might not be the one you want to commit  It can happen due to a file deletion in your submodule  etc  If so  do a reset in your local submodule directory and in your project parent directory  run again   git submodule update --init --recursive

User · Answer

Note  while the modern form of updating submodule commits would be  git submodule update --recursive --remote --merge --force  The older form was  git submodule foreach --quiet git pull --quiet origin  Except    this second form is not really  quot quiet quot   See commit a282f5a  12 Apr 2019  by Nguy n Th  i Ng c Duy  pclouds    Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit f1c9f6c  25 Apr 2019   submodule foreach  fix  quot  lt command gt  --quiet quot  not being respected   Robin reported that git submodule foreach --quiet git pull --quiet origin  is not really quiet anymore  It should be quiet before fc1b924  submodule  port submodule subcommand  foreach  from shell to C  2018-05-10   Git v2 19 0-rc0  because parseopt can t accidentally eat options then   quot git pull quot  behaves as if --quiet is not given  This happens because parseopt in submodule--helper will try to parse both --quiet options as if they are foreach s options  not git-pull s  The parsed options are removed from the command line  So when we do pull later  we execute just this git pull origin  When calling submodule helper  adding  quot -- quot  in front of  quot git pull quot  will stop parseopt for parsing options that do not really belong to submodule--helper foreach  PARSE OPT KEEP UNKNOWN is removed as a safety measure  parseopt should never see unknown options or something has gone wrong  There are also a couple usage string update while I m looking at them  While at it  I also add  quot -- quot  to other subcommands that pass  quot    quot  to submodule--helper   quot    quot  in these cases are paths and less likely to be --something-like-this  But the point still stands  git-submodule has parsed and classified what are options  what are paths  submodule--helper should never consider paths passed by git-submodule to be options even if they look like one    And Git 2 23  Q3 2019  fixes another issue   quot git submodule foreach quot  did not protect command line options passed to the command to be run in each submodule correctly  when the  quot --recursive quot  option was in use  See commit 30db18b  24 Jun 2019  by Morian Sonnet  momoson    Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 968eecb  09 Jul 2019   submodule foreach  fix recursion of options   Calling  git submodule foreach --recursive  lt subcommand gt  -- lt option gt   leads to an error stating that the option -- lt option gt  is unknown to submodule--helper  That is of course only  when  lt option gt  is not a valid option for git submodule foreach  The reason for this is  that above call is internally translated into a call to submodule--helper  git submodule--helper foreach --recursive      --  lt subcommand gt  -- lt option gt   This call starts by executing the subcommand with its option inside the first level submodule and continues by calling the next iteration of the submodule foreach call git --super-prefix  lt submodulepath gt  submodule--helper     foreach --recursive  lt subcommand gt  -- lt option gt   inside the first level submodule  Note that the double dash in front of the subcommand is missing  This problem starts to arise only recently  as the PARSE OPT KEEP UNKNOWN flag for the argument parsing of git submodule foreach was removed in commit a282f5a  Hence  the unknown option is complained about now  as the argument parsing is not properly ended by the double dash  This commit fixes the problem by adding the double dash in front of the subcommand during the recursion    Note that  before Git 2 29  Q4 2020    quot git submodule update --quiet quot  man  did not squelch underlying  quot rebase quot  and  quot pull quot  commands  See commit 3ad0401  30 Sep 2020  by Theodore Dubois  tbodt    Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 300cd14  05 Oct 2020   submodule update  silence underlying merge rebase with  quot --quiet quot  Signed-off-by  Theodore Dubois   Commands such as   git pull --rebase --recurse-submodules --quiet    produce non-quiet output from the merge or rebase  Pass the --quiet option down when invoking  quot rebase quot  and  quot merge quot   Also fix the parsing of git submodule update man  -v  When e84c3cf3   quot git-submodule sh  accept verbose flag in cmd update to be non-quiet quot   2018-08-14  Git v2 19 0-rc0 -- merge  taught  quot git submodule update quot  man  to take  quot --quiet quot   it apparently did not know how   GIT QUIET  --quiet  works  and reviewers seem to have missed that setting the variable to  quot 0 quot   rather than unsetting it  still results in  quot --quiet quot  being passed to underlying commands

User · Answer

Jason is correct in a way but not entirely      update      Update the registered submodules    i e  clone missing submodules and   checkout the commit specified in the   index of the containing repository    This will make the submodules HEAD be   detached unless --rebase or --merge is   specified or the key   submodule  name update is set to   rebase or merge    So  git submodule update does checkout  but it is to the commit in the index of the containing repository  It does not yet know of the new commit upstream at all  So go to your submodule  get the commit you want and commit the updated submodule state in the main repository and then do the git submodule update

User · Answer

The git submodule update command actually tells Git that you want your submodules to each check out the commit already specified in the index of the superproject  If you want to update your submodules to the latest commit available from their remote  you will need to do this directly in the submodules   So in summary     Get the submodule initially git submodule add ssh   bla submodule dir git submodule init    Time passes  submodule upstream is updated   and you now want to update    Change to the submodule directory cd submodule dir    Checkout desired branch git checkout master    Update git pull    Get back to your project root cd       Now the submodules are in the state you want  so git commit -am  Pulled down update to submodule dir    Or  if you re a busy person   git submodule foreach git pull origin master

User · Answer

If you are looking to checkout master branch for each submodule -- you can use the following command for that purpose   git submodule foreach git checkout master

User · Answer

git pull --recurse-submodules   This will pull all the latest commits

User · Answer

Your main project points to a particular commit that the submodule should be at  git submodule update tries to check out that commit in each submodule that has been initialized  The submodule is really an independent repository - just creating a new commit in the submodule and pushing that isn t enough  You also need to explicitly add the new version of the submodule in the main project   So  in your case  you should find the right commit in the submodule - let s assume that s the tip of master   cd mod git checkout master git pull origin master   Now go back to the main project  stage the submodule and commit that   cd    git add mod git commit -m  Updating the submodule  mod  to the latest version    Now push your new version of the main project   git push origin master   From this point on  if anyone else updates their main project  then git submodule update for them will update the submodule  assuming it s been initialized

User · Answer

the simplest way to handle git projects containing submodules is to always add --recurse-submodules   at the end of each git command example  git fetch --recurse-submodules  another git pull --update --recurse-submodules  etc

User · Answer

Here s an awesome one-liner to update everything to the latest on master   git submodule foreach  git fetch origin --tags  git checkout master  git pull   amp  amp  git pull  amp  amp  git submodule update --init --recursive   Thanks to Mark Jaquith

User · Answer

Plain and simple  to fetch the submodules   git submodule update --init --recursive   And now proceed updating them to the latest master branch  for example    git submodule foreach git pull origin master

User · Answer

Git 1 8 2 features a new option  --remote  that will enable exactly this behavior  Running  git submodule update --remote --merge   will fetch the latest changes from upstream in each submodule  merge them in  and check out the latest revision of the submodule  As the documentation puts it      --remote      This option is only valid for the update command  Instead of using the superproject   s recorded SHA-1 to update the submodule  use the status of the submodule   s remote-tracking branch    This is equivalent to running git pull in each submodule  which is generally exactly what you want

User · Answer

It seems like two different scenarios are being mixed together in this discussion   Scenario 1  Using my parent repository s pointers to submodules  I want to check out the commit in each submodule that the parent repository is pointing to  possibly after first iterating through all submodules and updating pulling these from remote   This is  as pointed out  done with  git submodule foreach git pull origin BRANCH git submodule update   Scenario 2  which I think is what OP is aiming at  New stuff has happened in one or more submodules  and I want to 1  pull these changes and 2  update the parent repository to point to the HEAD  latest  commit of this these submodules   This would be done by  git submodule foreach git pull origin BRANCH git add module 1 name git add module 2 name        git add module n name git push origin BRANCH   Not very practical  since you would have to hardcode n paths to all n submodules in e g  a script to update the parent repository s commit pointers   It would be cool to have an automated iteration through each submodule  updating the parent repository pointer  using git add  to point to the head of the submodule s    For this  I made this small Bash script   git-update-submodules sh     bin bash  APP PATH  1 shift  if   -z  APP PATH    then   echo  Missing 1st argument  should be path to folder of a git repo     exit 1  fi  BRANCH  1 shift  if   -z  BRANCH    then   echo  Missing 2nd argument  branch name      exit 1  fi  echo  Working in   APP PATH  cd  APP PATH  git checkout  BRANCH  amp  amp  git pull --ff origin  BRANCH  git submodule sync git submodule init git submodule update git submodule foreach   git checkout  BRANCH  amp  amp  git pull --ff origin  BRANCH  amp  amp  git push origin  BRANCH     true   for i in   git submodule foreach --quiet  echo  path   do   echo  Adding  i to root repo    git add   i  done  git commit -m  Updated  BRANCH branch of deployment repo to point to latest head of submodules  git push origin  BRANCH   To run it  execute  git-update-submodules sh  path to base repo BRANCH NAME   Elaboration  First of all  I assume that the branch with name  BRANCH  second argument  exists in all repositories  Feel free to make this even more complex   The first couple of sections is some checking that the arguments are there  Then I pull the parent repository s latest stuff  I prefer to use --ff  fast-forwarding  whenever I m just doing pulls  I have rebase off  BTW    git checkout  BRANCH  amp  amp  git pull --ff origin  BRANCH   Then some submodule initializing  might be necessary  if new submodules have been added or are not initialized yet   git submodule sync git submodule init git submodule update   Then I update pull all submodules   git submodule foreach   git checkout  BRANCH  amp  amp  git pull --ff origin  BRANCH  amp  amp  git push origin  BRANCH     true    Notice a few things  First of all  I m chaining some Git commands using  amp  amp  - meaning previous command must execute without error   After a possible successful pull  if new stuff was found on the remote   I do a push to ensure that a possible merge-commit is not left behind on the client  Again  it only happens if a pull actually brought in new stuff   Finally  the final    true is ensuring that script continues on errors  To make this work  everything in the iteration must be wrapped in the double-quotes and the Git commands are wrapped in parentheses  operator precedence    My favourite part   for i in   git submodule foreach --quiet  echo  path   do   echo  Adding  i to root repo    git add   i  done   Iterate all submodules - with --quiet  which removes the  Entering MODULE PATH  output  Using  echo  path   must be in single-quotes   the path to the submodule gets written to output   This list of relative submodule paths is captured in an array          - finally iterate this and do git add  i to update the parent repository   Finally  a commit with some message explaining that the parent repository was updated  This commit will be ignored by default  if nothing was done  Push this to origin  and you re done   I have a script running this in a Jenkins job that chains to a scheduled automated deployment afterwards  and it works like a charm   I hope this will be of help to someone

User · Answer

In my case  I wanted git to update to the latest and at the same time re-populate any missing files   The following restored the missing files  thanks to --force which doesn t seem to have been mentioned here   but it didn t pull any new commits   git submodule update --init --recursive --force  This did   git submodule update --recursive --remote --merge --force

[git] Update Git submodule to latest commit on origin

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