<p><a href="http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-submodule.html">Git Submodules</a> are actually pretty great. Here’s a simple way to manage submodule development from within an open source project.</p>
<p>Say there’s an Awesome Framework, and you want to write an open source plugin for it.</p>
<p>First create the plugin.</p>
<p>(the ‘gh’ command comes from the <a href="http://github.com/defunkt/github-gem">Github gem</a>)</p>
<pre>
$ gh create my-fantastic-plugin
</pre>
<p>Next clone the framework.</p>
<pre>
$ gh clone defunkt/my-awesome-framework
$ cd my-awesome-framework
</pre>
<p>Now add your plugin as a submodule to the framework.</p>
<pre>
$ gh submodule add git://github.com/defunkt/my-fantastic-plugin.git plugins/my-fantastic-plugin
</pre>
<p>Next <code>cd</code> into the plugin and add your private <span class="caps">URL</span> as a remote.</p>
<pre>
$ cd plugins/my-fantastic-plugin
$ gh remote add push git@github.com:defunkt/my-fantastic-plugin.git
</pre>
<p>And that’s it. Make changes from within <code>my-awesome-framework/plugins/my-fantastic-plugin</code> and, when you’re ready, just <code>gh push push master</code>.</p>
<p>Best of all: people cloning your <code>my-awesome-framework</code> fork will have no problem pulling down your <code>my-fantastic-plugin</code> submodule, as you’ve registered the public clone <span class="caps">URL</span> for the submodule. The commands</p>
<pre>
$ gh submodule init
$ gh submodule update
</pre>
<p>Will pull the submodules into the current repository.</p>
<p>This is how I develop <a href="http://github.com/defunkt/textmate.el">textmate.el</a> from within my <a href="http://github.com/defunkt/emacs/tree/master/vendor">Emacs config</a> while keeping the submodule <span class="caps">URL</span> public.</p>
<p><img src="http://img.skitch.com/20081126-qrn7p5xwmsi65d4sxdt83bc9u7.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>Check out <a href="http://github.com/defunkt/my-awesome-framework">my-awesome-framework</a> to see this Guide’s example in action.</p>
<p>If you are deploying an application with capistrano and you want to use submodules.</p>
<pre>
set :git_enable_submodules, 1
</pre>
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developing-with-submodules
Developing with Submodules
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