We're using git submodules to manage a couple of large projects that have dependencies on many other libraries we've developed. Each library is a separate repo brought into the dependent project as a submodule. During development, we often want to just go grab the latest version of every dependent submodule.
How do I pull the latest changes for all git submodules?
If it's the first time you check-out a repo you need to use --init first:
git submodule update --init --recursive
For git 1.8.2 or above, the option --remote was added to support updating to latest tips of remote branches:
git submodule update --recursive --remote
This has the added benefit of respecting any "non default" branches specified in the .gitmodules or .git/config files (if you happen to have any, default is origin/master, in which case some of the other answers here would work as well).
For git 1.7.3 or above you can use (but the below gotchas around what update does still apply):
git submodule update --recursive
or:
git pull --recurse-submodules
if you want to pull your submodules to latest commits instead of the current commit the repo points to.
See git-submodule(1) for details
git submodule foreach also gets run in each submodule EDIT: nvm, just use --recurse-submodules –
Investigate git submodule update --recursive nowadays. –
Pellagra git submodule foreach "(git checkout master; git pull)&" –
Stung git submodule foreach "(git checkout <current branch>; git pull)&" –
Diesis git submodule add -b <branch> as per git-scm.com/docs/git-submodule when adding them, or later manually by adding the line branch = <branch> to the section of the module in .gitmodules. When branch of every module is specified git submodule foreach git pull should work without ... origin master. –
Colonnade origin master at the end of this command might have unexpected results if some of your submodules are tracking a different branch or location name of that particular submodule. Obvious to some, but probably not to everyone. –
Shagbark git submodule update --recursive looks to see which revision the parent repository has stored for each submodule, then checks out that revision in each submodule. It does NOT pull the latest commits for each submodule. git submodule foreach git pull origin master or git pull origin master --recurse-submodules is what you want if you intend to update each submodule to the latest from their origin repositories. Only then will you get pending changes in the parent repo with updated revision hashes for submodules. Check those in and you're good. –
Heathendom git submodule update --init --recursive if only some submodules have not been initiated yet? –
Abroad --init answer part should be moved to the top because that's all people want to know. –
Racklin fatal: Needed a single revision Unable to find current origin/master revision in submodule path. –
Iyar master. The default for Github is main now. It kinda breaks this flow. –
Discrepancy --remote flag is enough to pull the latest commits –
Inchworm --progress flag i.e.git submodule update --init --recursive --progress. It is helpful in case you are downloading large repos. –
Trevethick git submodule update --recursive --remote --init is what I was looking for. –
Markus git pull --recurse-submodules --jobs=10
a feature git first learned in 1.8.5.
Until the bug is fixed, for the first time you do need to run
git submodule update --init --recursive
git pull --recurse-submodules nor git submodule update --recursive does not initialize newly added submodules. To initialize them you need run git submodule update --recursive --init. Quote from manual: If the submodule is not yet initialized, and you just want to use the setting as stored in .gitmodules, you can automatically initialize the submodule with the --init option. –
Hollenbeck git submodule update --recursive --remote which also updates the submodules to the remote latest revision instead of the stored SHA-1. –
Hemo --recurse-submodules to be the default? I see fetch.recurseSubmodules, but not pull.recurseSubmodules... –
Epp git pull --recurse-submodules --jobs=10 and saw Fetching submodule useful_scripts/ripgrep_replace, but it didn't actually run a git pull inside that subrepo, rather, it only ran a git fetch inside that repo it looks like! How do I make it complete the process by merging that fetched data into my current main branch, like a git pull would do? –
Xray git submodule foreach --recursive git pull origin main, or if your main branches are called master instead: git submodule foreach --recursive git pull origin master. See this answer here. –
Xray git submodule foreach --recursive git pull, so that it will pull whatever upstream branch it is already set to track, and you don't have to specify the remote name nor branch name manually each time. From this answer. –
Xray git submodule update --init --remote --recursive
from within the git repo directory, works best for me.
This will pull all latest including submodules.
git - the base command to perform any git command
submodule - Inspects, updates and manages submodules.
update - Update the registered submodules to match what the superproject
expects by cloning missing submodules and updating the working tree of the
submodules. The "updating" can be done in several ways depending on command
line options and the value of submodule.<name>.update configuration variable.
--init without the explicit init step if you do not intend to customize
any submodule locations.
--recursive is specified, this command will recurse into the registered
submodules, and update any nested submodules within.
git submodule update --recursive
from within the git repo directory, works best for me.
This will pull all latest including submodules.
git version 2.17.2. –
Worn git submodule update --recursive --remote --init is what I was looking for. –
Markus Note: This is from 2009 and may have been good then but there are better options now.
We use this. It's called git-pup:
#!/bin/bash
# Exists to fully update the git repo that you are sitting in...
git pull && git submodule init && git submodule update && git submodule status
Just put it in a suitable bin directory (/usr/local/bin). If on Windows, you may need to modify the syntax to get it to work :)
Update:
In response to the comment by the original author about pulling in all of the HEADs of all of the submodules -- that is a good question.
I am pretty sure that git does not have a command for this internally. In order to do so, you would need to identify what HEAD really is for a submodule. That could be as simple as saying master is the most up to date branch, etc...
Following this, create a simple script that does the following:
git submodule status for "modified" repositories. The first character of the output lines indicates this. If a sub-repo is modified, you may NOT want to proceed.git checkout master && git pull. Check for errors.I'd like to mention that this style is not really what git submodules were designed for. Typically, you want to say "LibraryX" is at version "2.32" and will stay that way until I tell it to "upgrade".
That is, in a sense, what you are doing with the described script, but just more automatically. Care is required!
Update 2:
If you are on a windows platform, you may want to look at using Python to implement the script as it is very capable in these areas. If you are on unix/linux, then I suggest just a bash script.
Need any clarifications? Just post a comment.
git config --global alias.pup '!git pull && git submodule init && git submodule update && git submodule status' and then use it as git pup without any scripting. –
Helprin git submodule init after first pull that had submodules included, so that everything would start working properly. –
Arsenopyrite Henrik is on the right track. The git submodule foreach command can execute any arbitrary shell script. Two options to pull the very latest might be:
git submodule foreach git pull origin master
and:
git submodule foreach /path/to/some/cool/script.sh
That will iterate through all initialized submodules and run the given commands.
--recusrive too, like this: git submodule foreach --recursive git pull origin master. See man git submodule and search for the section which says foreach [--recursive] <command>, for details. –
Xray The following worked for me on Windows.
git submodule init
git submodule update
For me, git 2.24.03, get updated to latest commit of remote branches defined in .gitmodules.
git submodule update --recursive --init
git submodule update --recursive --remote
git version 2.24.3 (Apple Git-128)
Please Note:
Someone said that
git pull --recurse-submodulesis the same as git submodule update --recursive --remote. But from my test, git pull --recurse-submodules may not get updated to latest commit of remote branches defined in .gitmodules.
Clone and Init Submodule
git clone [email protected]:speedovation/kiwi-resources.git resources
git submodule init
During development just pull and update submodule
git pull --recurse-submodules && git submodule update --recursive
git submodule foreach git pull origin master
git submodule update --remote --merge
note: last two commands have same behaviour
git submodule update did the trick. Now I'm downloading submodules data missing from the clone first step. Thank you. I'm not good at git :C –
Reminiscence Edit:
In the comments was pointed out (by philfreo ) that the latest version is required. If there is any nested submodules that need to be in their latest version :
git submodule foreach --recursive git pull
-----Outdated comment below-----
Isn't this the official way to do it ?
git submodule update --init
I use it every time. No problems so far.
Edit:
I just found that you can use:
git submodule foreach --recursive git submodule update --init
Which will also recursively pull all of the submodules, i.e. dependancies.
git submodule update --init --recursive –
Exhume git submodule foreach --recursive git pull –
Gearldinegearshift As it may happens that the default branch of your submodules is not master, this is how I automate the full Git submodules upgrades:
git submodule init
git submodule update
git submodule foreach 'git fetch origin; git checkout $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD); git reset --hard origin/$(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD); git submodule update --recursive; git clean -dfx'
master and main. Thanks! –
Discrepancy I don't know since which version of git this is working, but that's what you're searching for:
git submodule update --recursive
I use it with git pull to update the root repository, too:
git pull && git submodule update --recursive
The above answers are good, however we were using git-hooks to make this easier but it turns out that in git 2.14, you can set git config submodule.recurse to true to enable submodules to to updated when you pull to your git repository.
This will have the side effect of pushing all submodules change you have if they are on branches however, but if you have need of that behaviour already this could do the job.
Can be done by using:
git config submodule.recurse true
git submodule init before hand though if your submodule isn't yet initialized. –
Leptosome To clarify a few things based on already available answers of pulling "latest" code of each submodule from remote.
If "latest" means the submodule pointers that were checked in, then by all means use:
git submodule update --recursive
- or -
git pull --recurse-submodules --jobs=X
If "latest" means the latest of main, then something like this can work:
git submodule foreach "git checkout main && git pull"
Unfortunately, this means there's no "--jobs" option, so we cannot run it in parallel. The closest I've seen to running this in parallel is by using the pfs python code.
I often use this commands, it works so far.
git pull
git submodule foreach --recursive git checkout master
git submodule foreach --recursive git pull
Hope this faster.
As noted in antitoxic's answer, a simple git submodule foreach --recursive git pull can be enough.
Francis Bacon's answer notes git pull --recurse-submodules can differ.
You could test out and see what is going on with a verbose option:
git pull -v --recurse-submodules
But for that, you will need Git 2.40 (Q1 2023).
"git pull -v --recurse-submodules"(man) attempted to pass -v down to underlying git submodule update(man), which did not understand the request and barfed: this has been corrected with Git 2.40 (Q1 2023).
See commit 6f65f84 (10 Dec 2022) by Sven Strickroth (csware).
(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit b3b9e5c, 28 Dec 2022)
submodule: accept-vfor the update commandSigned-off-by: Sven Strickroth
Since a56771a ("
builtin/pull: respect verbosity settings in submodules", 2018-01-25, Git v2.17.0-rc0 -- merge listed in batch #3), "git pull -v --recurse-submodules"(man) propagates the-vto the submodule command, but because the latter command does not understand the option, it barfs.Teach "
git submodule update"(man) to accept the option to fix it.
No more "barfing" (IE. displaying the usage 'git submodule foreach [--quiet] [--recursive] [--] <command>') because the -v was an unknown option for git submodule.
Git for windows 2.6.3:
git submodule update --rebase --remote
From the top level in the repo:
git submodule foreach git checkout develop
git submodule foreach git pull
This will switch all branches to develop and pull latest
git submodule foreach git pull origin master Had to append the branch I wanted to fetch. other than that, worked perfectly. –
Georgeanngeorgeanna --recursive as well in order to recurse down into submodules within submodules. Ex: git submodule foreach --recursive git pull –
Xray I did this by adapting gahooa's answer above:
Integrate it with a git [alias] ...
If your parent project has something like this in .gitmodules:
[submodule "opt/submodules/solarized"]
path = opt/submodules/solarized
url = [email protected]:altercation/solarized.git
[submodule "opt/submodules/intellij-colors-solarized"]
path = opt/submodules/intellij-colors-solarized
url = [email protected]:jkaving/intellij-colors-solarized.git
Add something like this inside your .gitconfig
[alias]
updatesubs = "!sh -c \"git submodule init && git submodule update && git submodule status\" "
Then to update your submodules, run:
git updatesubs
I have an example of it in my environment setup repo.
All you need to do now is a simple git checkout
Just make sure to enable it via this global config: git config --global submodule.recurse true
Here is the command-line to pull from all of your git repositories whether they're or not submodules:
ROOT=$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel 2> /dev/null)
find "$ROOT" -name .git -type d -execdir git pull -v ';'
If you running it in your top git repository, you can replace "$ROOT" into ..
I worked on this simple shell script which works fine for me.
#!/bin/bash
#git init
git init
#git clone repo including submodules
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/username/project.git
#change directory -repo
cd project
#update the remote ie tag/commits
git submodule update --remote
#add commit
git commit -a -m "commit in submodule"
#git push
git push -u origin
Remark: not too easy way, but workable and it has its own unique pros.
If one want to clone only HEAD revision of a repository and only HEADs of all the its submodules (i.e. to checkout "trunk"), then one can use following Lua script. Sometimes simple command git submodule update --init --recursive --remote --no-fetch --depth=1 can result in an unrecoverable git error. In this case one need to clean up subdirectory of .git/modules directory and clone submodule manually using git clone --separate-git-dir command. The only complexity is to find out URL, path of .git directory of submodule and path of submodule in superproject tree.
Remark: the script is only tested against https://github.com/boostorg/boost.git repository. Its peculiarities: all the submodules hosted on the same host and .gitmodules contains only relative URLs.
-- mkdir boost ; cd boost ; lua ../git-submodules-clone-HEAD.lua https://github.com/boostorg/boost.git .
local module_url = arg[1] or 'https://github.com/boostorg/boost.git'
local module = arg[2] or module_url:match('.+/([_%d%a]+)%.git')
local branch = arg[3] or 'master'
function execute(command)
print('# ' .. command)
return os.execute(command)
end
-- execute('rm -rf ' .. module)
if not execute('git clone --single-branch --branch master --depth=1 ' .. module_url .. ' ' .. module) then
io.stderr:write('can\'t clone repository from ' .. module_url .. ' to ' .. module .. '\n')
return 1
end
-- cd $module ; git submodule update --init --recursive --remote --no-fetch --depth=1
execute('mkdir -p ' .. module .. '/.git/modules')
assert(io.input(module .. '/.gitmodules'))
local lines = {}
for line in io.lines() do
table.insert(lines, line)
end
local submodule
local path
local submodule_url
for _, line in ipairs(lines) do
local submodule_ = line:match('^%[submodule %"([_%d%a]-)%"%]$')
if submodule_ then
submodule = submodule_
path = nil
submodule_url = nil
else
local path_ = line:match('^%s*path = (.+)$')
if path_ then
path = path_
else
submodule_url = line:match('^%s*url = (.+)$')
end
if submodule and path and submodule_url then
-- execute('rm -rf ' .. path)
local git_dir = module .. '/.git/modules/' .. path:match('^.-/(.+)$')
-- execute('rm -rf ' .. git_dir)
execute('mkdir -p $(dirname "' .. git_dir .. '")')
if not execute('git clone --depth=1 --single-branch --branch=' .. branch .. ' --separate-git-dir ' .. git_dir .. ' ' .. module_url .. '/' .. submodule_url .. ' ' .. module .. '/' .. path) then
io.stderr:write('can\'t clone submodule ' .. submodule .. '\n')
return 1
end
path = nil
submodule_url = nil
end
end
end
I think you'll have to write a script to do this. To be honest, I might install python to do it so that you can use os.walk to cd to each directory and issue the appropriate commands. Using python or some other scripting language, other than batch, would allow you to easily add/remove subprojects with out having to modify the script.
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