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using git submodules for plugins

# first remove your copy and paste plugin….

git rm -r vendor/plugins/xxxxxx
git commit

now you are ready to add the submodule

git submodule add git://your_git_repo/xxxxx.git vendor/plugins/xxxxx
git commit

To load the submodule, you need to 

git submodule init
git submodule update

To deploy submodules using capistrano, capistrano needs to also do the submodule init and update. 

# in deploy.rb
set :git_enable_submodules,1

if you want to update the version of the submodule – or the branch
cd into the plugin, git pull or git checkout branch
then cd back to the containing project and git commit

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 15th, 2009 at 2:23 pm and is filed under rails. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to “using git submodules for plugins”

  1. George Anderson says:
    July 15, 2009 at 5:52 pm

    You can also use the “-b ” flag with “git submodule add” to get the desired branch out of the box.

  2. Anton says:
    July 15, 2009 at 6:51 pm

    Hi, thanks for your article.
    Can you explain what extra benefits can I get while using git submodules?

  3. marcus says:
    July 16, 2009 at 1:57 pm

    Yes – I thought I should be a little more verbose – The benefits

    1. you can update your plugin from the source when there is a change
    2. you can branch your plugin, modify it and still pull in updates from other branches
    3. it creates a .gitmodules file which shows you where the plugin came from, and you know exactly what version of the plug in that you are using
    4. not a copy and paste job which is the standard ./script/plugin install method
  4. Anton says:
    July 20, 2009 at 7:37 am

    Thanks for your explanation!
    I should start looking more closely at git submodules.

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