What is the current way to remove a git submodule?
Solution 1
You have the git submodule deinit
git submodule deinit <asubmodule>
git rm <asubmodule>
# Note: asubmodule (no trailing slash)
# or, if you want to leave it in your working tree
git rm --cached <asubmodule>
rm -rf .git/modules/<asubmodule>
deinit
Un-register the given submodules, i.e. remove the whole
submodule.$name
section from.git/config
together with their work tree.Further calls to
git submodule update
,git submodule foreach
andgit submodule sync
will skip any unregistered submodules until they are initialized again, so use this command if you don’t want to have a local checkout of the submodule in your work tree anymore.If you really want to remove a submodule from the repository and commit that use
git rm
instead.If
--force
is specified, the submodule’s work tree will be removed even if it contains local modifications.
Solution 2
I'm using Git version 2.16.2 and git rm
does the job mostly well:
git rm path-to-submodule
You can verify with git status
and git diff --cached
that this deinitializes the submodule and modifies .gitmodules
automatically. As always, you need to commit the change.
However, even though the submodule is removed from source control, .git/modules/path-to-submodule
still contains the submodule repository and .git/config
contains its URL, so you still have to remove those manually:
git config --remove-section submodule.path-to-submodule
rm -rf .git/modules/path-to-submodule
Keeping the submodule repository and configuration is intentional so that you can undo the removal with e.g. git reset --hard
.
Solution 3
How to safely remove a submodule.
(adds to https://stackoverflow.com/a/1260982/342794)
-
List and locate the submodule section in
.gitmodules
file. Say via terminalvi .gitmodules
. Example:[submodule "submodules/afnetworking"] path = submodules/afnetworking url = https://github.com/CompanyName/afnetworking.git
-
Submodules can be used with local forks. For a long running projects, code may differ from original repo and might have some fixes. It's a good idea to verify if submodule code went through changes over the course of project. Example: Look at the logs, if it's pointing to
master
branch or some local branch. exploring git logs to find modifications that were done via terminal. typically these are stored under a directory, my example, undersubmodules
directory.User$ cd submodules/afnetworking User$ git log
-
Remove the submodule section from .gitmodules, save the file. Example:
git status
should show only following as modifiedmodified: .gitmodules
Stage the changes with
git add .gitmodules
.-
List and locate the submodule section in
.git/config
files. Say via terminalvi .git/config
. Example:[submodule "submodules/afnetworking"] url = https://github.com/CompanyName/afnetworking.git
-
Remove the git cache sobmodule files. running
git rm --cached submodules/afnetworking
(no trailing slash) would remove it successfully. Example:User$ git rm --cached submodules/afnetworking rm 'submodules/afnetworking' <-- terminal output
-
Remove the submodule files under
.git
directory withrm -rf .git/modules/...
. Confirm it withgit status
afterwards.User$ rm -rf .git/modules/submodules/afnetworking/ User$ git status On branch feature/replace-afnetworking-submodule-with-pod Changes to be committed: (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage) modified: .gitmodules deleted: submodules/afnetworking Untracked files: (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed) submodules/afnetworking/
-
Commit the changes. Confirm with
git status
afterwards.User$ git commit -m "Remove submodule afnetworking" [feature/replace-afnetworking-submodule-with-pod 70e239222] Remove submodule afnetworking 2 files changed, 4 deletions(-) delete mode 160000 submodules/afnetworking User$ git status On branch feature/replace-afnetworking-submodule-with-pod Untracked files: (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed) submodules/afnetworking/ nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)
-
Delete the untracked submodule files.
User$ rm -rf submodules/afnetworking
Delete the references from Xcode project. Build, fix compile and runtime issues.
Comments
-
j2emanue about 4 years
as of git version 1.9.3 (Apple Git-50) on mac how do i remove a git submodule? I am reading alot of outdated information with many developers telling me they wont work. What is the current way ? will
git deinit pathToSubModule
do the trick ?The steps i thought would work are here but comments say they wont.
Let me explain my current situation and what i need accomplished. I've installed the Quick repository and added it to as submodule to my project. This code is already checked in and others are using it. What i now need to do is fork the same Quick repository and host it on a more secure github that my company has (so a completely other private github). After forking it i want to add that fork as a gitSubmodule and let it replace the current Quick submodule i had installed previously.
update: i've read that the following is the correct way on latest git version please confirm?
To remove a submodule added using: git submodule add [email protected]:repos/blah.git lib/blah Run: git rm lib/blah That's it. For old versions of git (circa ~1.8.5) use: git submodule deinit lib/blah git rm lib/blah git config -f .gitmodules --remove-section submodule.lib/blah
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j2emanue about 9 yearsi want to completely wipe out the submodule for me and the other users as well. So all i need is git submodule deinit asubmodule; and git rm asubmodule ?? Also what about the other users cached submodule, would they have to delete it after pulling down ?
-
malhal over 7 yearsI wanted to delete the local copy of the submodule and this worked perfect, all the files in the subdir are gone.
-
Sarah Messer over 7 yearsYou may also need
rm -rf <asubmodule>
if you've already checked out a version of the base repository which has un-registered the submodule. -
TurboGuma almost 4 yearsmost recent answer and the shortest solution