Support for git submodules

[olof-dev]

Use case

I'm using the git: functionality of pubspec.yaml to depend on a package distributed via a git repository. That repository consists of a Flutter plugin that uses native code, with the native code placed in the plugin's ios directory. This native code is itself a library, coming from external sources, and the natural way of doing version control seems to be to include it as a git submodule in the plugin's repository.

Being a submodule, its code doesn't get automatically pulled in when the plugin repository is cloned, meaning that the plugin pulled in by pub doesn't include the native library. Would it be possible to offer the option for pub to recursively pull in submodules?

Changes needed

The relevant command is probably

git clone --recurse-submodules

Perhaps one can offer syntax like

dependencies:
  my_package:
    git:
      url: https://github.com/username/repo_name.git
      recurse-submodules: true

Workarounds

One can of course move the submodule to another location and copy the files across to the plugin directory, but this is far from ideal. I'm not sure if there's a better method. Iirc git doesn't like symlinks.

Edit: I just discovered git subtrees. I think they can also be used as a workaround, though they seem a lot less convenient than submodules.

[sigurdm]

I can see how this can be useful.

Similar to the recent request for git lfs support #1433.

I worry about having features with just a few users and wonder how widespread the use of submodules is.

Please upvote if you would like this feature.

[p4-k4]

Voting for this.

[JoseGuilhermeCR]

It should definitely be doable... I don't want to develop a "native" library under a flutter plugin repository... git submodules work great, they should've been used from the start.
I'll just place a condition on the flutter devs, they will need to copy the folder manually since flutter itself can't seem to do it 🤷

[rjhind]

We need this too. We have C processing code pulled in to a plugin as a submodule and it would be much more useful to have the flutter pub get do a submodule update.

[PeteClubSeven]

This also would've been helpful to me, I can imagine a lot of FFI use cases will desire this.

[iulian0512]

+1

any news on this?

[sigurdm]

any news on this?

No news currently

[bvnp43]

Is this something hard to implement, jesus, 4 yo issue.

There is a cmake function FetchContent_Declare that allows to fetch sources during build stage - workaround for platforms that use cmake build system.