my-restaurant-app/
MAIN REPO
📄 index.html
📄 app.js
📄 package.json
📦 Click a library below to add it here as a submodule…
📦 CHAPTER · GIT SUBMODULE
Repos Inside
Repos
Need to include another Git repository inside yours? git submodule embeds a repo as a sub-directory, pinned to a specific commit. A repo within a repo.
Scene I
Nested cookbooks
Your main project is a restaurant app. It uses a
shared UI library and a recipe engine
that are separate repos maintained by other teams.
Instead of copy-pasting, you link them as
submodules — each one
tracks its own repo and stays pinned to a specific version.
📦 ADD SUBMODULES
Drag a library into your project
AVAILABLE LIBRARIES
Submodules linked!
🎉 Two repos nested inside
Each submodule is its own Git repo with its own commits.
Your main repo just stores a pointer (commit hash) to
the exact version you want.
Key rule: after cloning, always run
git submodule update --init --recursive
to actually download the submodule content.
$ git submodule add https://github.com/team/ui-lib
Cloning into 'ui-lib'...
$ git submodule update --init --recursive
Submodule path 'ui-lib': checked out 'a1b2c3d'
Epilogue
Submodules = repos inside repos.
Pinned to a specific version.
Shared code, separate histories.
Pinned to a specific version.
Shared code, separate histories.
Modern alternative: many teams prefer package managers (npm, pip) for dependencies. Use submodules when you need to develop the dependency alongside your project.