How to checkout old git commit including all submodules recursively?

git git-submodules
Ben Baron picture Ben Baron · Feb 28, 2013 · Viewed 22.8k times · Source

I have a git repo with multiple submodules. One of those submodules has multiple submodules of it's own. All I'm looking to do is check out an old commit on the master repo and have it checkout the appropriate commits from all submodules to get the correct state of the code at that time.

I know that git contains the information necessary as the ls-tree command can tell me which commit each submodule was on. However, I have to manually check out each one, which is painfully time consuming.

I'm looking for something like git checkout --recursive but such a command doesn't seem to exist.

Is there anyway to do this?

Answer

Chronial picture Chronial · Feb 28, 2013

You need two commands to achieve this:

git checkout *oldcommit*
git submodule update --recursive

Update: This answer is outdated as of 2018 – see VonC's answer below for more current information.

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