How do I move an existing Git submodule within a Git repository?
The most modern answer, taken from Valloric's comment above:
- Upgrade to Git 1.9.3 (or 2.18 if the submodule contains nested submodules)
git mv old/submod new/submod
- Afterwards the .gitmodules and the submodule directory are already staged for a commit (you can verify this with
git status
.) - Commit the changes with
git commit
and you're good to go!
Done!
In my case, I wanted to move a submodule from one directory into a subdirectory, e.g. "AFNetworking" -> "ext/AFNetworking". These are the steps I followed:
- Edit .gitmodules changing submodule name and path to be "ext/AFNetworking"
- Move submodule's git directory from ".git/modules/AFNetworking" to ".git/modules/ext/AFNetworking"
- Move library from "AFNetworking" to "ext/AFNetworking"
- Edit ".git/modules/ext/AFNetworking/config" and fix the
[core] worktree
line. Mine changed from../../../AFNetworking
to../../../../ext/AFNetworking
- Edit "ext/AFNetworking/.git" and fix
gitdir
. Mine changed from../.git/modules/AFNetworking
to../../git/modules/ext/AFNetworking
git add .gitmodules
git rm --cached AFNetworking
git submodule add -f <url> ext/AFNetworking
Finally, I saw in the git status:
matt$ git status
# On branch ios-master
# Changes to be committed:
# (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
# modified: .gitmodules
# renamed: AFNetworking -> ext/AFNetworking
Et voila. The above example doesn't change the directory depth, which makes a big difference to the complexity of the task, and doesn't change the name of the submodule (which may not really be necessary, but I did it to be consistent with what would happen if I added a new module at that path.)
Newer versions of git
Git now has native support for moving submodules:
Since git 1.8.5,
git mv old/submod new/submod
works as expected and does all the plumbing for you. You might want to use git 1.9.3 or newer, because it includes fixes for submodule moving.
Older versions of git
As mentioned in the comments, this answer refers to the steps needed with older versions of git.
The process is similar to how you'd remove a submodule (see How do I remove a submodule?):
Edit
.gitmodules
and change the path of the submodule appropriately, and put it in the index withgit add .gitmodules
.If needed, create the parent directory of the new location of the submodule (
mkdir -p new/parent
).Move all content from the old to the new directory (
mv -vi old/parent/submodule new/parent/submodule
).Make sure Git tracks this directory (
git add new/parent
).Remove the old directory with
git rm --cached old/parent/submodule
.Move the directory
.git/modules/old/parent/submodule
with all its content to.git/modules/new/parent/submodule
.Edit the
.git/modules/new/parent/config
file, make sure that worktree item points to the new locations, so in this example it should beworktree = ../../../../../new/parent/module
. Typically there should be two more..
than directories in the direct path in that place.Edit the file
new/parent/module/.git
, make sure that the path in it points to the correct new location inside the main project.git
folder, so in this examplegitdir: ../../../.git/modules/new/parent/submodule
.git status
output looks like this for me afterwards:# On branch master # Changes to be committed: # (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage) # # modified: .gitmodules # renamed: old/parent/submodule -> new/parent/submodule #
Finally, commit the changes.