Automatically access git submodules via ssh or https

I finally solved this problem by specifying the submodules url as a relative path:

So lets say your main git repository can be reached

• either via https://gitlabserver.com/my/path/main.git
• or via [email protected]:my/path/main.git

And the .gitmodules file looks like this:

[submodule "utils"]     
    path = libs/utils   
    url = https://gitlabserver.com/my/path/utils.git

That would mean that even when you check out the main application via ssh, the submodule utils would still be accessed via https.

However, you can replace the absolute path with a relative one like this:

[submodule "utils"]     
    path = libs/utils   
    url = ../utils.git

and from now on use

• either git clone --recursive https://gitlabserver.com/my/path/main.git
• or git clone --recursive [email protected]:my/path/main.git

to get the whole repository structure which ever way you want. Obviously that doesn't work for cases where the relative ssh and the https paths are not the same, but at least for gitlab hosted repositories this is the case.

This is also handy if you (for whatever reason) mirror your repository structure at two different remote sites.

I think I have a more general answer, but it's not quite automatic. There's a configuration setting you can apply in ~/.gitconfig that will replace a particular URL with the one of your choosing.

For Github I have this in my ~/.gitconfig:

[url "ssh://[email protected]/"]
    insteadOf = https://github.com/

Here's a repository with a submodule declared with an HTTPS url that I can clone recursively using HTTPS.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/p2/OAuth2.git

OR

git clone --recursive [email protected]:p2/OAuth2.git

You can read about its use here: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-config#Documentation/git-config.txt-urlltbasegtinsteadOf

And here: https://git-scm.com/docs/git-clone