Get a git submodule checkout on remote

Since switching to GIT from SVN, I have to say that my “developer live” is much simpler. Especially dealing with branches, tags and “externals” (submodules) has been a step forward. Whereas in the past, I’ve cringed each time I was thinking of branching my code and afterwards merging it with SVN, it is now a joy doing so in GIT. Now, branching really works.

In any case, the issue I’ve had today was that I wanted to update one of our staging servers with a plugin I’ve developed and subsequently used a submodule for it. Now, why checking out the existing repository on the staging server, it shows the submodules directory but they were empty. Hmhmh…

According to the docs, even thought the repository sees the submodules, it will not check them out automatically. After some more reading, I’ve figured that one has to initialise them. Right, so here is the code:

[code]git submodule init
git submodule update[/code]

Voila, your submodule directories are now “blessed” with the new code and you are ready to rock. Enjoy.