Why is git submodule not updated automatically on git checkout?

Question

When switching branches with git checkout I would assume that most of the time you would want to update your submodules.

• In what situation do you not want to update submodules after switching?
• What would break if this was done automatically by git checkout?

Updated with example:

• Branch A has submodule S at 3852f1
• Branch B has submodule S at fd72d7

On branch A, git checkout B will result in a working copy of branch B with submodule S at 3852f1 (with a modified S). git submodule update will checkout S at fd72d7.

Answer 1

git checkout --recurse-submodules was added to git 2.13

This is mentioned on the release notes at: https://github.com/git/git/commit/e1104a5ee539408b81566066aaa6963cb87d5cd6#diff-c24776ff22455a30fbb78e378b7df0b0R139

submodule.recurse option was added to git 2.14

Set as:

git config --global submodule.recurse true 

man git-config says:

Specifies if commands recurse into submodules by default. This applies to all commands that have a --recurse-submodules option. Defaults to false.

I feel that not updating modules by default is a bad Git default behavior that goes against most user's expectations and limits the adoption of submodules, I really wish the devs would change it.

Answer 2

I believe that the submodules not updating automatically is in line with the development goals of Git. Git is meant to work in a distributed mode and doesn't presume that you are even able to connect to a non-local repository unless you explicitly tell it to. Git not auto-refreshing a submodule would be the expected behavior when thought of that way.

With that being said, if you know that you always want those sub-modules to be pulled in and you know that you would never branch off of those submodules to another local repository, then it shouldn't break anything if you automatically refreshed them after a checkout.