gitmodules(5) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | NOTES | EXAMPLES | SEE ALSO | GIT | COLOPHON

GITMODULES(5)                  Git Manual                  GITMODULES(5)

NAME         top

       gitmodules - Defining submodule properties

SYNOPSIS         top

       $GIT_WORK_TREE/.gitmodules

DESCRIPTION         top

       The .gitmodules file, located in the top-level directory of a Git
       working tree, is a text file with a syntax matching the
       requirements of git-config(1).

       The file contains one subsection per submodule, and the
       subsection value is the name of the submodule. The name is set to
       the path where the submodule has been added unless it was
       customized with the --name option of git submodule add. Each
       submodule section also contains the following required keys:

       submodule.<name>.path
           Defines the path, relative to the top-level directory of the
           Git working tree, where the submodule is expected to be
           checked out. The path name must not end with a /. All
           submodule paths must be unique within the .gitmodules file.

       submodule.<name>.url
           Defines a URL from which the submodule repository can be
           cloned. This may be either an absolute URL ready to be passed
           to git-clone(1) or (if it begins with ./ or ../) a location
           relative to the superproject’s origin repository.

       In addition, there are a number of optional keys:

       submodule.<name>.update
           Defines the default update procedure for the named submodule,
           i.e. how the submodule is updated by the git submodule update
           command in the superproject. This is only used by git
           submodule init to initialize the configuration variable of
           the same name. Allowed values here are checkout, rebase,
           merge or none, but not !command (for security reasons). See
           the description of the update command in git-submodule(1) for
           more details.

       submodule.<name>.branch
           A remote branch name for tracking updates in the upstream
           submodule. If the option is not specified, it defaults to the
           remote HEAD. A special value of .  is used to indicate that
           the name of the branch in the submodule should be the same
           name as the current branch in the current repository. See the
           --remote documentation in git-submodule(1) for details.

       submodule.<name>.fetchRecurseSubmodules
           This option can be used to control recursive fetching of this
           submodule. If this option is also present in the submodule’s
           entry in .git/config of the superproject, the setting there
           will override the one found in .gitmodules. Both settings can
           be overridden on the command line by using the
           --[no-]recurse-submodules option to git fetch and git pull.

       submodule.<name>.ignore
           Defines under what circumstances git status and the diff
           family show a submodule as modified. The following values are
           supported:

           all
               The submodule will never be considered modified (but will
               nonetheless show up in the output of status and commit
               when it has been staged).

           dirty
               All changes to the submodule’s work tree will be ignored,
               only committed differences between the HEAD of the
               submodule and its recorded state in the superproject are
               taken into account.

           untracked
               Only untracked files in submodules will be ignored.
               Committed differences and modifications to tracked files
               will show up.

           none
               No modifications to submodules are ignored, all of
               committed differences, and modifications to tracked and
               untracked files are shown. This is the default option.

           If this option is also present in the submodule’s entry in
           .git/config of the superproject, the setting there will
           override the one found in .gitmodules.

           Both settings can be overridden on the command line by using
           the --ignore-submodules option. The git submodule commands
           are not affected by this setting.

       submodule.<name>.shallow
           When set to true, a clone of this submodule will be performed
           as a shallow clone (with a history depth of 1) unless the
           user explicitly asks for a non-shallow clone.

NOTES         top

       Git does not allow the .gitmodules file within a working tree to
       be a symbolic link, and will refuse to check out such a tree
       entry. This keeps behavior consistent when the file is accessed
       from the index or a tree versus from the filesystem, and helps
       Git reliably enforce security checks of the file contents.

EXAMPLES         top

       Consider the following .gitmodules file:

           [submodule "libfoo"]
                   path = include/foo
                   url = git://foo.com/git/lib.git

           [submodule "libbar"]
                   path = include/bar
                   url = git://bar.com/git/lib.git

       This defines two submodules, libfoo and libbar. These are
       expected to be checked out in the paths include/foo and
       include/bar, and for both submodules a URL is specified which can
       be used for cloning the submodules.

SEE ALSO         top

       git-submodule(1), gitsubmodules(7), git-config(1)

GIT         top

       Part of the git(1) suite

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the git (Git distributed version control
       system) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://git-scm.com/⟩.  If you have a bug report for this manual
       page, see ⟨http://git-scm.com/community⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/git/git.git⟩ on 2024-06-14.  (At that time,
       the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2024-06-12.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

Git 2.45.2.492.gd63586         2024-06-12                  GITMODULES(5)

Pages that refer to this page: git(1)git-commit(1)git-commit-tree(1)git-config(1)git-diff(1)git-diff-files(1)git-diff-index(1)git-diff-tree(1)git-fetch(1)git-format-patch(1)git-log(1)git-mv(1)git-pull(1)git-rm(1)git-show(1)git-status(1)git-submodule(1)gitsubmodules(7)