[git] How to "git clone" including submodules?

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 that git clone parent_repo actually puts data in the submodule folder?

For example, http://github.com/cwolves/sequelize/tree/master/lib/, nodejs-mysql-native is pointing at an external git submodule, but when I checkout the sequelize project, that folder is empty.

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

git submodule init 
git submodule update

I think you can go with 3 steps:

git clone
git submodule init
git submodule update

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.

If your submodule was added in a branch be sure to include it in your clone command...

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

[Quick Answer]

After cloning the parent repo (including some submodule repo), do the following:

git submodule update --init --recursive

[Quick Answer]

You can use this command to clone your repo with all the submodules:

git clone --recursive YOUR-GIT-REPO-URL

Or if you have already cloned the project, you can use:

git submodule init
git submodule update

Try this for including submodules in git repository.

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

or

git clone --recurse-submodules

Try this:

git clone --recurse-submodules

It automatically pulls in the submodule data assuming you have already added the submodules to the parent project.

Git 2.23 (Q3 2019): if you want to clone and update the submodules to their latest revision:

git clone --recurse-submodules --remote-submodules

If you just want to clone them at their recorded SHA1:

git clone --recurse-submodules

See below.

Note that Git 2.29 (Q4 2020) brings a significant optimization around submodule handling.

See commit a462bee (06 Sep 2020) by Orgad Shaneh (orgads).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 2ce9d4e, 18 Sep 2020)}

submodule: suppress checking for file name and ref ambiguity for object ids

^{Signed-off-by: Orgad Shaneh}

The argv argument of collect_changed_submodules() contains only object ids (the objects references of all the refs).

Notify setup_revisions() that the input is not filenames by passing assume_dashdash, so it can avoid redundant stat for each ref.

Also suppress refname_ambiguity flag to avoid filesystem lookups for each object. Similar logic can be found in cat-file, pack-objects and more.

This change reduces the time for git fetch^(man) in my repo from 25s to 6s.

Original answer 2010

As joschi mentions in the comments, git submodule now supports the --recursive option (Git1.6.5 and more).

If --recursive is specified, this command will recurse into the registered submodules, and update any nested submodules within.

See Working with git submodules recursively for the init part.
See git submodule explained for more.

With version 1.6.5 of git and later, you can do this automatically by cloning the super-project with the –-recursive option:

git clone --recursive git://github.com/mysociety/whatdotheyknow.git

Update 2016, with git 2.8: see "How to speed up / parallelize downloads of git submodules using git clone --recursive?"

You can initiate fetching the submodule using multiple threads, in parallel.
For instances:

git fetch --recurse-submodules -j2

Even better, with Git 2.23 (Q3 2019), you can clone and checkout the submodule to their tracking branch in one command!

See commit 4c69101 (19 May 2019) by Ben Avison (bavison).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 9476094, 17 Jun 2019)}

clone: add --remote-submodules flag

When using git clone --recurse-submodules there was previously no way to pass a --remote switch to the implicit git submodule update command for any use case where you want the submodules to be checked out on their remote-tracking branch rather than with the SHA-1 recorded in the superproject.

This patch rectifies this situation.
It actually passes --no-fetch to git submodule update as well on the grounds they the submodule has only just been cloned, so fetching from the remote again only serves to slow things down.

That means:

--[no-]remote-submodules:

All submodules which are cloned will use the status of the submodule’s remote-tracking branch to update the submodule, rather than the superproject’s recorded SHA-1. Equivalent to passing --remote to git submodule update.

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 [email protected]:your_repo.git

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

git submodule foreach "git checkout master"

If it is a new project simply you can do like this :

$ git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/chaconinc/YourProjectName 

If it is already installed than :

$ cd YourProjectName (for the cases you are not at right directory) 
$ git submodule init
$ git submodule update

late answer

// git CLONE INCLUDE-SUBMODULES ADDRESS DESTINATION-DIRECTORY
git clone --recursive https://[email protected]/USERNAME/REPO.git DESTINATION_DIR

As I just spent a whole hour fiddling around with a friend: Even if you have Admin rights on BitBucket, always clone the ORIGINAL repository and use the password of the one who owns the repo. Annoying to find out that you ran into this minetrap :P

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.

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

Submodules parallel fetch aims at reducing the time required to fetch a repositories and all of its related submodules by enabling the fetching of multiple repositories at once. This can be accomplished by using the new --jobs option, e.g.:

git fetch --recurse-submodules --jobs=4

According to Git team, this can substantially speed up updating repositories that contain many submodules. When using --recurse-submodules without the new --jobs option, Git will fetch submodules one by one.

Source: http://www.infoq.com/news/2016/03/git28-released