Question

I have a github repository which use numerous submodules. I would like to be able to modify them locally then push them on their repositories (so I have to use the read-write repository url).

However, I also need to use github’s gh-pages service to serve the repository, and it seems requiring a read-only url in the .gitmodules file.

Can I have the best of both worlds ?

Answer 1

This is definitely possible and supported:

1. Create .gitmodules file with the read only url
2. commit this .gitmodules
3. run git submodule init
4. modify local .git/config to change submodule to read-write url

From the git-submodule manpage:

init

Initialize the submodules, i.e. register each submodule name and url found in .gitmodules into .git/config. It will also copy the value of submodule.$name.update into .git/config. The key used in .git/config is submodule.$name.url. This command does not alter existing information in .git/config. You can then customize the submodule clone URLs in .git/config for your local setup and proceed to git submodule update; you can also just use git submodule update –init without the explicit init step if you do not intend to customize any submodule locations.