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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-26T04:41:57+00:00

I have a git repository set up with several submodules, which creates a .gitmodules

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I have a git repository set up with several submodules, which creates a .gitmodules file that is a tracked file in the parent repository. However, there are other developers wanting to work on this repository, and check out the submodules. But currently the URLs for the remote submodule repositories contain my username; in the .gitmodules file it’s something like:

[submodule foo]
  path = sub/foo
  url = https://myuser@example.com/git/foo.git

Obviously other developers can’t fetch from example.com as myuser (they don’t have my password); how can I have one main repository that multiple developers can pull/push to, and allow them to have individual access to the submodules (setting up a single username they all share on the submodule host server would work, but is not good user management)?

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  1. Editorial Team

    If I understand correctly, you’re using HTTP basic authentication over HTTPS to allow only particular developers to access the repository. In that case, you can commit a .gitmodules that looks like:

    [submodule foo]
  path = sub/foo
  url = https://example.com/git/foo.git

    … i.e. without a user name, and then tell each developer to put their username and password in their ~/.netrc file. (If you’re using Windows, then there is some good advice on that here.) A simple .netrc file might look like:

    machine example.com
  login myusername
  password areamandyingtotellsomeonehiscoolpassword

    Update: An alternative, which doesn’t involve using .netrc, would be the following:

    Again, remove the user name from the URL in .gitmodules and commit and push that change. When someone clones the repository they would first run:

    git submodule init

    … which will set the config option submodule.sub/foo.url to the URL in .gitmodules. However, the init step won’t clone the submodule into place until you do git submodule update, so you can do:

    git config submodule.sub/foo.url https://myuser:mypass@example.com/git/foo.git

    … and then:

    git submodule update

    To clone the submodules with the right user name. Note that then your username and password for HTTP authentication will be stored in your git config.

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