How can I add a specific folder from a git repo as a git submodule?

git git-submodules
tuxcanfly picture tuxcanfly · Jul 1, 2010 · Viewed 24.1k times · Source

I have a git repo and I want to add a submodule to it. Problem is, the submodule exists as a folder inside another repo. Can I add only that folder as a submodule?

Answer

gitaarik picture gitaarik · Sep 3, 2013

I ended up doing this:

  1. Create a submodules directory.
  2. Add the submodule in this directory.
  3. Create a symlink to the specific directory inside the submodule.

This way you have default Git submodule behaviour and in your project you only use a subset of the whole submodule.

Related questions

Easy way to pull latest of all git submodules

We're using git submodules to manage a couple of large projects that have dependencies on many other libraries we've developed. Each library is a separate repo brought into the dependent project as a submodule. During development, we often want to …

Read More
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 …

Read More
How do I remove a submodule?

How do I remove a Git submodule? By the way, is there a reason I can't simply do git submodule rm whatever ?

Read More