`--name` option doesn't work with `git submodule add` command

Question

I want to add a git submodule with different name like:

git submodule add --name foo [email protected]:ironsand/cookbook-foo.git

I wanted to create a git submodule directory named foo, but the repository are created with the name cookbook-foo.

Most likely I'm doing something wrong, but I don't know what was wrong.

How can I change the name of git submodule directory?

Racklin

Answer 1

Don't conflate the path and the name of a submodule. You want to run

git submodule add [email protected]:ironsand/cookbook-foo.git foo/

instead. For more details, see the git-submodule man page; the relevant git-submodule syntax here is

git submodule [--name <name>] <repository> [<path>]

where...

• <repository> is the URL of the new submodule's origin repository.
• <path>, if specified, determines the name of the subdirectory (of the superproject's root directory) to receive the clone of the repo living at <repository>; if left unspecified, <path> defaults to the name of that repo.
• <name> is the submodule's name, i.e. the name that appear in the corresponding submodule entry in the .gitmodules file; if left unspecified, <name> simply defaults to <path>.

Here is a toy example to fix ideas:

$ cd ~/Desktop
$ mkdir test
$ cd test
$ git init
$ git submodule add --name brutus https://github.com/bradfitz/gitbrute bradfitz_bruteforce
$ ls -a
.           .git            bradfitz_bruteforce
..          .gitmodules
$ cat .gitmodules
[submodule "brutus"]
    path = bradfitz_bruteforce
    url = https://github.com/bradfitz/gitbrute

Ducks

Me, I "conflated" :) – Hepza

Answer 2

In last versions of git (since 1.8.5) you can do a git mv as a second step if the command failed or you forgot to set the option. The .submodule file will automatically updated.

git mv cookbook-foo foo

Check this post for more information about git mv over submodules.

Disparagement

Answer 3

In my case at least the answer by @jubObs did not work. I had to add the -- separator before the URL and the path, as shown in the examples of the submodule command's help.

$ git submodule -h
usage: git submodule [--quiet] [--cached]
   or: git submodule [--quiet] add [-b <branch>] [-f|--force] [--name <name>] [--reference <repository>] [--] <repository> [<path>]

So, for example:

git submodule add --name foo \
  -- [email protected]:ironsand/cookbook-foo.git \
  path/to/foo

For reference, my version of Git is 2.30.

$ git version
git version 2.30.0

Distance