How to clone only a folder from a git submodule?

Question

I'm trying to get just a folder from an external github repo to use in my project.

I want my project setup to be like this:

-my_project
    -submodule
        -code.py
    -MY_README
    -.git

And I have the remote repo named some-submodule with following structure:

-submodule
    -code.py
-README
-.gitignore

So I just want the submodule folder added to my project.

But I end up with this after

git submodule add http://github.com/user/submodule.git submodule

-my_project
    -submodule
        -submodule
            -code.py
        -README
        -.gitignore
    -MY_README
    -.gitignore

I am new to git so I really don't know if it possible using just git. If it is of some help I'm using msysgit on windows.

So, is there anyway that I can get a clean submodule folder in my project from a public repo?

If you're curious of exactly what I'm trying to do I'm trying to take directly from their repos these django plugins 1 2 to add them to my project.

Tiphany

Exact duplicate of How can I add a specific folder from a git repo as a git submodule? – Spain

Possible duplicate of How to change a git submodule to point to a subfolder? – Ln

Answer 1

What you want to do is not feasible because you cannot clone a part of a repository.

See details in duplicate How to change a git submodule to point to a subfolder?

Saransk

While, strictly speaking, cloning only parts of a repository is not possible there is sparse checkout since Git 1.7 to solve what the OP probably wants. See #600579 – Worshipful

Answer 2

If you:

git submodule add http://github.com/user/submodule.git

directly under my_project, you should end up with the desired organization of directories.

From git submodule add man page:

The optional argument <path> is the relative location for the cloned submodule to exist in the superproject.
If <path> is not given, the "humanish" part of the source repository is used ("repo" for "/path/to/repo.git" and "foo" for "host.xz:foo/.git").

Dismember

Awesome! I was following tutorials all the way and I didn't read the manual... I thought that I would end up with README file of the submodule in my own project... Thanks a lot! – Tiphany

There's a problem though... it only works if the repo of the submodule has the same name as the folder I want to use but if not ie: repo->django-submodule folder name->submodule it doesn't work anymore. Let's see if I find some workaround – Tiphany

I'm sorry man, I tried your solution with one of the repos that was well structured and I thought the problem was already solved... my bad. – Tiphany

Answer 3

just

git submodule update --init --recursive

in the root-directory of your project and it should do what you want

Shavian