How to add git submodule and tag it to a release?

Question

git clone my-new-repo-url
mkdir deps
cd deps
git submodule add -b 6.2.0 https://github.com/leethomason/tinyxml2.git

yields

fatal: 'origin/6.2.0' is not a commit and a branch '6.2.0' cannot be created from it
Unable to checkout submodule 'deps/tinyxml2'

does not populate .gitmodules, but creates a folder .git/modules/deps/tinyxml2 and adds a repo in deps/tinyxml2

I thought I did this way before, and it would populate .gitmodules with

[submodule "deps/tinyxml2"]
    path = deps/tinyxml2
    url = https://github.com/leethomason/tinyxml2.git
    branch = 6.2.0

but it's not working now what's up?

Wards

Answer 1

A branch and a release tag are not the same thing. A branch may continue to be developed and change over time. Having the flag in .gitmodules branch = something means the submodule will track that branch when asked to update.

---

git submodule add https://github.com/leethomason/tinyxml2.git populates .gitmodules with

[submodule "deps/tinyxml2"]
path = deps/tinyxml2
url = https://github.com/leethomason/tinyxml2.git

Then manually checking out the desired tag in the submodule with

cd deps/tinyxml2
git checkout 6.2.0

Add/commit/push with

git commit -am "adding and commiting all in one command"
git push

Adds the submodule to the repo, and in the browser we can see

where c1424ee4 is the specific commit where that release-tag was generated

Now doing a fresh clone into another folder

git clone my-new-repo-url
git submodule update --init --recursive

Has the submodule checked out at the same release tag 6.2.0 (commit c1424ee4)

Wards