Git will not init sync update new submodules

Question

Here s part of the contents of my  gitmodules file    submodule  src static management           path   src static management         url   git   github com eykd django-static-management git  submodule  external pyfacebook           path   external pyfacebook         url   http   github com sciyoshi pyfacebook git   However   git config only contains the first    submodule  src static management           url   git   github com eykd django-static-management git   The second submodule  external pyfacebook  was added by another developer in a feature branch  I ve inherited the development now  and have checked out the feature branch  However  Git will not pull the submodule for me  I ve tried    git submodule init git submodule update git submodule update --init git submodule sync Removing all submodule definitions from  git config and running git submodule init  It only copies over the previously existing submodule and ignores the new one  Entering new submodule definitions in  git config manually and running git submodule update  Only the previously existing submodules bother to update    in various combinations  but git simply will not update  git config based on the new contents of  gitmodules  nor will it create the external pyfacebook folder and pull the submodule s contents    What am I missing  Is manual intervention  adding a submodule entry by hand to  git config  truly required  and why   Edit  Manual intervention does not work  Manually adding the new submodule entry to  git config doesn t do a thing  The new submodule is ignored

User · Answer

For the record  I created the same issue by adding an empty repository as submodule  In this case  there was no reference hash available for the submodule  leading to the error described by the original poster   Force-adding the repository after having committed to it solved the issue  as in Arvids post  git submodule add --force git my-repo git destination

User · Answer

There seems to be a lot of confusion here  also  in the answers   git submodule init is not intended to magically generate stuff in  git config  from  gitmodules   It is intended to set up something in an entirely empty subdirectory after cloning the parent project  or pulling a commit that adds a previously non-existing submodule   In other words  you follow a git clone of a project that has submodules  which you will know by the fact that the clone checked out a  gitmodules file  by a git submodule update --init --recursive   You do not follow git submodule add     with a git submodule init  or git submodule update --init   that isn t supposed to work  In fact  the add will already update the appropriate  git config if things work   EDIT  If a previously non-existing git submodule was added by someone else  and you do a git pull of that commit  then the directory of that submodule will be entirely empty  when you execute git submodule status the new submodule s hash should be visible but will have a - in front of it   In this case you need to follow your git pull also with a git submodule update --init  plus --recursive when it s a submodule inside a submodule  in order to get the new  previously non-existing  submodule checked out  just like after an initial clone of a project with submodules  where obviously you didn t have those submodules before either

User · Answer

I had the same problem      gitmodules had the submodule  but after a git submodule init command it wasn t in  git config   Turns out the developer who added the submodule also added the submodule directory to the  gitignore file   That doesn t work

User · Answer

Just sharing what worked for me    git clone --recurse-submodules  lt repository path gt    This clones the remote repository already including the submodules  This means you won t need to run git submodule update or init after cloning

User · Answer

Remove the submodule from your  git config Run git submodule init command Go to your submodule directory and run git pull origin master   It should works now

User · Answer

Thinking that manually setting up  gitmodules is enough is WRONG  My local git version 2 22 0 as of this writing   So I came to this thread wondering why wasn t git submodule init working  I setup the  gitmodules file and proceeded to do git submodule init      IMPORTANT   git submodule add company project git includes project is required  when adding the module for the first time   this will     add config to  git config update the  gitmodules file track the submodule location  includes project in this example    you must then git commit after you have added the submodule  this will commit  gitmodules and the tracked submodule location    When the project is cloned again  it will have the  gitmodules and the empty submodules directory  e g  includes project in this example   At this point  git config does not have submodule config yet  until git submodule init is run  and remember this only works because  gitmodules AND includes project are tracked in the main git repo   Also for reference see    How do I remove a submodule  How do I move an existing submodule

User · Answer

When I saw this today  a developer had moved part of the tree into a new sub-directory and it looks as though his git client did not record the updated Subproject rules in the tree  instead they were just nuked  leaving  gitmodules referring both to stale locations and to subprojects which no longer existed in the current tree   Adding the submodules back in  and comparing the commit shas of the submodule to those found in git show  breaking commit sha  search for lines matching regexp  -Subproject  to adjust as needed fixed things

User · Answer

I had the same problem today and figured out that because I typed git submodule init then I had those line in my  git config    submodule     active       I removed that and typed   git submodule update --init --remote   And everything was back to normal  my submodule updated in its subdirectory as usual

User · Answer

I had a similar problem with a submodule  It just didn t want to be cloned pulled updated whatever   When trying to re-add the submodule using git submodule add git my-repo git destination I got the following output   A git directory for  destination  is found locally with remote s     origin        git my-repo git If you want to reuse this local git directory instead of cloning again from   git my-repo git use the  --force  option  If the local git directory is not the correct repo or you are unsure what this means choose another name with the  --name  option    So  I tried to enforce the add command  git submodule add --force git my-repo git destination  That worked in my case

User · Answer

I had the same problem but none of the solutions above helped  The entries in the  gitmodules and in  git config were right but the command git submodules update --init --recursive was doing nothing  I also removed the submodule directory and did run git submodules update --init --recursive and got the submodule directory back but with exactly the same commit as before   I found the answer on this page  The command is git submodule update --remote

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The problem for me is that the repo s previous developer had committed the submodules thing folder as just a regular folder  meaning when I tried to run git submodule add      it would fail with   submodules thing  already exists in the index  yet trying to update the submodule would also fail because it saw that the path did not contain a submodule   To fix  I had to delete the submodules thing folder  commit the deletion  then run the git submodule add command to add it back correctly   git submodule add --force --name thing https   github com person thing git submodules thing

User · Answer

This means the submodules haven   t been set up correctly and a git submodule add command will have to be executed  IF SUBMODULES WERE ADDED CORRECTLY To give some background  when a repo with submodules has been set up correctly someone has already performed a git submodule add command  which does the following things   create a folder for the submodule to reside in if it doesn   t already exist clone the project as a submodule set the submodule parameters in the shareable  gitmodules file set the submodule parameters in your private  git config file create a  git folder for the submodule in your superproject   s private  git modules folder and also  record in your superproject   s index for each submodule in which folder it will reside  and in what state it should be  the hash commit code of the submodule    Point 3 and 6 are relevant when you clone the superproject  and point 6 indicates whether a git submodule add has been performed correctly and was committed  You can check point 6 by seeing whether the folders in which the submodules should reside are already there and empty  Note  this does not require a  keep or  gitignore mechanism to be in place  since this is part of a Git mechanism   After cloning the superproject you can also perform a git submodule to see which submodules are expected  You can then proceed by doing   git submodule will show the submodules present in the tree and their corresponding commit hash code  can serve as an initial check to see which submodules are expected  git submodule init copies the submodules parameters from the repo   s  gitmodules file to your private  git config file  point 4   git submodule update clones the submodules to a commit determined by the superproject and creates the submodules   git folders under your superproject s  git modules  folder  points 2 and 5   git submodule update --remote same as update but sets the submodule to the latest commit on the branch available by the remote repo  similar as going in each submodule   s folder afterwards and do a git pull  or  git submodule update --init --remote which is all of the above combined    Alternatively  when the repo is set up correctly  you can also do a git clone with the --recursive flag to include the submodules with the init and update performed on them automatically  IF SUBMODULES WERE NOT ADDED CORRECTLY But if the submodules are not committed correctly  and the submodules and their corresponding folders are not already recorded in the index  then first every submodule in the  gitmodules file needs to be individually added via git submodule add before one can proceed   Note  as mentioned here  Git does not currently have a command to do this at once for multiple submodules present in a  gitmodules file

User · Answer

Same as you I found that git submodule sync does not do what you expect it to do  Only after doing an explicit git submodule add again does a submodule url change   So  I put this script in   bin git-submodule-sync rb   https   gist github com frimik 5125436  And I also use the same logic on a few post-receive git deploy scripts   All I need to do now is edit  gitmodules  then run this script and it finally works like I thought git submodule sync was supposed to

User · Answer

Had the same issue  when git ignored init and update commands  and does nothing   HOW TO FIX   Your submodule folder should be committed into git repo It shouldn t be in  gitignore   If that requirements met  it will work  Otherwise  all commands will execute without any messages and result   If you did all that  and it still doesn t work    Add submodule manually  e g  git submodule add git     path to git submodule init git submodule update commit and push all files -  gitmodules and your module folder  note  that content of folder will not commit  drop your local git repo clone a new one ensure that  git config doesn t have any submodules yet Now  git submodule init - and you will see a message that module registered git submodule update - will fetch module Now look at  git config and you will find registered submodule

User · Answer

Please check your submodules directory  If there is only a  git file in it  then delete it  Now execute git submodule update --remote --init

User · Answer

Below sync command resolved the issue    git submodule sync

User · Answer

According to the answer from Dave James Miller I can confirm that it worked for me  The important thing here was to commit the subprojects commit ID  Just to have the entry in  gitmodules was not enough   Here is an appropriate commit   https   github com dirkaholic vagrant-php-dev-box commit d5f4c40bdbd80eefbb5ac6029823733f591435ae

User · Answer

git version 2 7 4  This command updates local code  git submodule update --init --force --remote

User · Answer

Deleting submodule dir and its contents   external pyfacebook  folder  if it exists before git submodule add     might fix problems

User · Answer

Sort of magically  but today I ran git submodule init followed by   git submodule sync followed by git submodule update and it started   pulling my submodules    Magic  Perhaps  This is truly one of the most   annoying experiences with Git      Scratch that  I actually got it working by doing git submodule update --init --recursive  Hope this helps   PS  Make sure you are in the root git directory  not the submodule s

User · Answer

I had this same problem - it turned out that the  gitmodules file was committed  but the actual submodule commit  i e  the record of the submodule s commit ID  wasn t   Adding it manually seemed to do the trick - e g    git submodule add http   github com sciyoshi pyfacebook git external pyfacebook    Even without removing anything from  git config or  gitmodules    Then commit it to record the ID properly   Adding some further comments to this working answer  If the git submodule init or git submodule update does nt work  then as described above git submodule add url should do the trick  One can cross check this by    git config --list   and one should get an entry of the submodule you want to pull in the result of the git config --list command  If there is an entry of your submodule in the config result  then now the usual git submodule update --init should pull your submodule  To test this step  you can manually rename the submodule and then updating the submodule     mv yourmodulename yourmodulename-temp  git submodule update --init   To find out if you have local changes in the submodule  it can be seen via git status -u   if you want to see changes in the submodule   or git status --ignore-submodules   if you dont want to see the changes in the submodule

[git] Git will not init/sync/update new submodules

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