Restore git submodules from .gitmodules
Expanding on @Mark Longair's answer, I wrote a bash script to automate steps 2 & 3 of the following process:
- Clone a 'boilerplate' repo to begin a new project
- Remove the .git folder and re-initialize as a new repo
- Re-initialize the submodules, prompting for input before deleting folders
#!/bin/bash
set -e
rm -rf .git
git init
git config -f .gitmodules --get-regexp '^submodule\..*\.path$' > tempfile
while read -u 3 path_key path
do
url_key=$(echo $path_key | sed 's/\.path/.url/')
url=$(git config -f .gitmodules --get "$url_key")
read -p "Are you sure you want to delete $path and re-initialize as a new submodule? " yn
case $yn in
[Yy]* ) rm -rf $path; git submodule add $url $path; echo "$path has been initialized";;
[Nn]* ) exit;;
* ) echo "Please answer yes or no.";;
esac
done 3<tempfile
rm tempfile
Note: the submodules will be checked out at the tip of their master branch instead of the same commit as the boilerplate repo, so you'll need to do that manually.
Piping the output from git config into the read loop was causing problems with the prompt for input, so it outputs it to a temp file instead. Any improvements on my first bash script would be very welcome :)
Big thanks to Mark, https://stackoverflow.com/a/226724/193494, bash: nested interactive read within a loop that's also using read, and tnettenba @ chat.freenode.net for helping me arrive at this solution!
git submodule init
only considers submodules that already are in the index (i.e. "staged") for initialization. I would write a short script that parses .gitmodules
, and for each url
and path
pair runs:
git submodule add <url> <path>
For example, you could use the following script:
#!/bin/sh
set -e
git config -f .gitmodules --get-regexp '^submodule\..*\.path$' |
while read path_key local_path
do
url_key=$(echo $path_key | sed 's/\.path/.url/')
url=$(git config -f .gitmodules --get "$url_key")
git submodule add $url $local_path
done
This is based on how the git-submodule.sh
script itself parses the .gitmodules
file.
Extending excellent @Mark Longair's answer to add submodule respecting branch and repo name.
#!/bin/sh
set -e
git config -f .gitmodules --get-regexp '^submodule\..*\.path$' |
while read path_key path
do
name=$(echo $path_key | sed 's/\submodule\.\(.*\)\.path/\1/')
url_key=$(echo $path_key | sed 's/\.path/.url/')
branch_key=$(echo $path_key | sed 's/\.path/.branch/')
url=$(git config -f .gitmodules --get "$url_key")
branch=$(git config -f .gitmodules --get "$branch_key" || echo "master")
git submodule add -b $branch --name $name $url $path || continue
done