Restore git submodules from .gitmodules

Question

I have a folder, which was a git repo. It contains some files and .gitmodules file. Now, when I do git init and then git submodule init, the latter command output is nothing. How can I help git to see submodules, defined in .gitmodules file without running git submodule add by hand again?

Update: this is my .gitmodules file:

[submodule "vim-pathogen"]
    path = vim-pathogen
    url = git://github.com/tpope/vim-pathogen.git
[submodule "bundle/python-mode"]
    path = bundle/python-mode
    url = git://github.com/klen/python-mode.git
[submodule "bundle/vim-fugitive"]
    path = bundle/vim-fugitive
    url = git://github.com/tpope/vim-fugitive.git
[submodule "bundle/ctrlp.vim"]
    path = bundle/ctrlp.vim
    url = git://github.com/kien/ctrlp.vim.git
[submodule "bundle/vim-tomorrow-theme"]
    path = bundle/vim-tomorrow-theme
    url = git://github.com/chriskempson/vim-tomorrow-theme.git

and here is listing of this dir:

drwxr-xr-x  4 evgeniuz 100 4096 июня  29 12:06 .
drwx------ 60 evgeniuz 100 4096 июня  29 11:43 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 evgeniuz 100 4096 июня  29 10:03 autoload
drwxr-xr-x  7 evgeniuz 100 4096 июня  29 12:13 .git
-rw-r--r--  1 evgeniuz 100  542 июня  29 11:45 .gitmodules
-rw-r--r--  1 evgeniuz 100  243 июня  29 11:18 .vimrc

so, definitely, it is in top level. the git directory is not changed, only git init is done

Answer 1

git submodule init only considers submodules that already are in the index (i.e. "staged") for initialization. I would write a short script that parses .gitmodules, and for each url and path pair runs:

git submodule add <url> <path>

For example, you could use the following script:

#!/bin/sh

set -e

git config -f .gitmodules --get-regexp '^submodule\..*\.path$' |
    while read path_key path
    do
        url_key=$(echo $path_key | sed 's/\.path/.url/')
        url=$(git config -f .gitmodules --get "$url_key")
        git submodule add $url $path
    done

This is based on how the git-submodule.sh script itself parses the .gitmodules file.