git submodule update not functioning

git

Solution

You need to make sure your submodules are following a branch, or they will only be checked out at a specific SHA1 (not at the latest of a branch, but the special entry of the index of your parent repo)

See "Git submodules: Specify a branch/tag" in order to make your submodule follow a branch.

Then a `git submodule update --init --recursive --remote` would be enough to check out the latest from that branch.

This (`git submodule update --remote`) requires git 1.8.2+ March 2013. The OP Luís de Sousa has a git 1.7.9.5 (March 2012) which doesn't offer this feature.

Problem

I have a repository with various nested submodules. Committing and pushing works pretty well and the changes are visible at GitHub as expected. In the testing/production environments, new releases of this project are being deployed using these commands: ``` git pull --recurse-submodules git submodule update --init --recursive ``` But this only updates the root project, none of the submodules are updated to the commits associated with the HEAD at GitHub. So far the only way I have found to update the whole project is to run `git pull` inside each individual submodule folder. I understand that `git submodule update` is the method referenced in most places, but it is not really producing any results in this case. What could be the cause?

Original source

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