Question

While developing some patches on projects with an upstream Git repository I’m currently doing the following.

superproject/submodules/actualproject

^ parent repo           ^ Git submodule

actualproject has two remotes:

• vendor being the “upstream” remote.
• myname being my own “internal” remote repository.

Works fine this way, but as soon as another person (colleague) clones my tree (either using the superproject via submodules or just one of the submodules on its own), he’ll have:

• remote origin being my repository.
• remote vendor isn’t present.

What’s the best way to have at least the vendor remote configured automatically for the others cloning? Can I use the powers of submodules here? Eg. submodule init already sets a remote – can I set a second?

Or, is this a completely wrong approach from the beginning?

Answer 1

Your colleague should git clone <URL to 'vendor' repo> instead of using your own repo. That way he’ll get that remote (it’ll be called “origin” at first because that’s a git default, but he could change it if he wanted to).

Edit: To change the submodule remote he gets when he clones the super-project, you’ll have to edit your .gitmodules file to point to ‘vendor’ instead of ‘myname’ 😉