Git Submodule Utils

This small package is meant to help initializing git submodules, and pinning them to a certain branch instead of a certain commit.

To set up your repository, first install git-submodule-utils as a dev dependency:

npm install --save-dev git-submodule-utils

Then, add a postinstall script to your package.json file, and define your submodules

{
  //...,
  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "./node_modules/.bin/git-submodule-init"
  },
  "submodules": [
    {
      "path": "my-submodule-path",
      "url": "my-submodule-git-repository",
      "branch": "master"
    }
  ]
}

You can update your submodules any time in the future, and run npm install or npm run postinstall to reinitialize them.

If you want to change the branch of your submodule, you can use this script to spare some time with checking out the proper branch and installing it's npm dependencies:

./node_modules/bin/git-submodule-branch my-submodule-path branch-to-change-to