HOW TO USE THIS SUBMODULE

📄📄 Cloning our Sub module Repo

✅ Option 1: Clone with submodules in one command (Recommended)

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/VMahluza/quickcoach.git

This will:

Clone your main repository. Automatically initialize and clone the frontend and backend submodules.

✅ Option 2: Clone and manually initialize submodules

If you've already cloned the main repo without --recurse-submodules:

git clone https://github.com/VMahluza/quickcoach.git

Then run:

cd quickcoach
git submodule update --init --recursive

🛠️ Making Changes to this submodule

Let's say you made changes to the backend

1. Navigate into the submodule

cd backend

2. Check your current branch

git status
git branch

3. Add, commit, and push your changes

git add .
git commit -m "Your change message"
git push origin

📍 Now update the main repo to reference the new submodule commit

After pushing your submodule changes:

Go back to your main repo root: bash cd .. Git will detect the submodule has a new commit:

bash git status

Commit the submodule reference update:

git add backend  # or frontend
git commit -m "Updated backend submodule to latest commit"
git push origin main

This tells Git: "Hey, the main repo now points to a newer commit of the backend/frontend."

✅ Summary Workflow

Step What you do 1 cd backend or cd frontend 2 Make changes, commit & push to the submodule 3 cd .. back to main repo 4 git add backend 5 Commit and push the submodule update in main repo

📌 Important Notes

Each submodule has its own Git history. You must push from inside the submodule for changes to be saved remotely. Updating the submodule pointer in the main repo ensures collaborators get the correct version.

🔄 Pulling Updates Made by Someone Else (Submodules)

✅ Option 1: Full update (main repo + submodules)

If your colleague pushed both: Changes inside backend/ or frontend AND updated the main repo to point to the latest submodule commits Then run this:

git pull --recurse-submodules
git submodule update --init --recursive

This fetches the main repo and syncs submodules to the commit your colleague set.

✅ Option 2: Update submodules directly

If you only want to get the latest commits from the submodules (in case your colleague pushed, but didn’t update the main repo): For frontend:

cd frontend
git checkout main  # or the branch they pushed to
git pull
cd ..

For backend:

cd backend
git checkout main
git pull
cd ..

🧠 How it works

• git submodule update syncs to the commit specified in the main repo.

• git pull (inside a submodule) gets the latest code from the submodule’s own branch.

• If the main repo was updated by your teammate to point to newer commits, you can just do a top-level pull with --recurse-submodules.

💡 Tip

If you're working with branches in submodules (not pinned commits), you can set this up to always track latest like this:

git config -f .gitmodules submodule.backend.update remote
git config -f .gitmodules submodule.frontend.update remote
git submodule update --remote

COMMON ISSUES - 🧯 Submodules not up-to-date after cloning

After cloning, submodules are locked to a specific commit. So unless the main repo was updated to reference newer submodule commits, your submodules will appear outdated.

✅ Solutions

Update main repo to track submodule HEADs (optional for future)

Tell Git to track remote HEAD for submodules

git config -f .gitmodules submodule.backend.update remote
git config -f .gitmodules submodule.frontend.update remote

Now update to the latest commits in both submodules

git submodule update --remote

Then commit the updated submodule references in the main repo:

git add backend frontend
git commit -m "Updated submodules to latest commits"
git push origin main

From now on, git submodule update --remote will pull latest from default branches of submodules.