What’s the use of git submodules? It’s mostly useful when you want to work on the code in both the main repo and the sub repo at the same time. Otherwise, a normal dependency management system would suffice.

To have submodules safely set up so that you run into walls less often, do the following:

• Automatically log submodule changes when git diffing, to prevent you from committing changes you didn’t want to commit:

git config --global diff.submodule log

• To display a short summary of changes to submodules when using git status:

git config --global status.submodulesummary 1

• Before main repo changes are pushed, make sure submodule changes are pushed first, so that you don’t forget to publish dependencies:

# two options:

$ git config --global push.recurseSubmodules check # prompt you to push submodule changes yourself
$ git config --global push.recurseSubmodules on-demand # automatically push submodule changes for you

That’s it! Safe sub-moduling. 😀