Separate Git Repos for frontend and backend web development

Question

I have been researching git submodules, git subtrees and sparse checkouts and I simply cannot wrap my head around it. Here is my use case:

I have one repo, lets say frontend-repo, that not only holds files for a AngularJS based frontend, but some folders relating to testing, documentation, etc. A subfolder in this repo, called 'codebase', stores the HTML, CSS and JS for the app.

I have another repo, lets say backend-repo, which holds the python/flask backend, which initially serves the AngularJS app. Those files need to be located in the application/static subfolder.

When doing development and testing, we need to edit the files in application/static, debug, test, iterate until done. Basically, I have been trying to find a way using git to have a local checkout of the frontend/codebase folder into the backend repo. Submodules I can't get to work; subtree doesn't seem to be able to handle this use case either.

What is the best practice here? I could simply setup a symlink from one dir to the other, but I was hoping git had a nicer way of doing this. Does anyone have experience in this kind of workflow?

Answer 1

If I understand your question, you want two repositories. One for the back-end and one for the front-end? And you'd like your front-end to be a sub-directory of the back-end?

What's the trouble, both subtrees and submodules seem fine. Submodules are a little more clunky to work with imo though.

Just make everything part of your back-end repo, and subtree split out the changes periodically to your front end repo from the sub-directory.