Is there a way to make git pull automatically update submodules?

Is there a way to automatically have git submodule update (or preferably git submodule update --init called whenever git pull is done?

Looking for a git config setting, or a git alias to help with this.

As of Git 2.14, you can use git pull --recurse-submodules (and alias it to whatever you like).

As of Git 2.15, you could set submodule.recurse to true to enable the desired behaviour.

You can do this globally by running:

git config --global submodule.recurse true

git config --global alias.pullall '!git pull && git submodule update --init --recursive'

If you want arguments to be passed to git pull, then use this instead:

git config --global alias.pullall '!f(){ git pull "$@" && git submodule update --init --recursive; }; f'

Starting with Git 1.7.5 it should update submodules automatically by default like you want it to.

[EDIT: per comments: the new 1.7.5 behaviour is to automatically fetch the latest commits for submodules, but not to update them (in the git submodule update sense). So the information in this answer is relevant as background, but is not a complete answer by itself. You still need an alias to pull and update submodules in one command.]

The default behavior, "on-demand", is to update submodules whenever you fetch a commit that updates the submodule commit, and this commit isn't already located in your local clone.
You can also have it updated on every fetch or never (pre-1.7.5 behavior I assume).
The config option to change this behavior is fetch.recurseSubmodules.

> This option can be either set to a boolean value or to on-demand.
Setting it to a boolean changes the behavior of fetch and pull to unconditionally recurse into submodules when set to true or to not recurse at all when set to false.

> When set to on-demand (the default value), fetch and pull will only recurse into a populated submodule when its superproject retrieves a commit that updates the submodule’s reference.

See:

• git config man page (1.7.5) (or latest git config man page)
• git fetch man page (1.7.5) (or latest git fetch man page)

for more information.

git fetch --recurse-submodules[=yes|on-demand|no]

I'm surprised nobody mentioned using git hooks to do this!

Just add files named post-checkout and post-merge to your .git/hooks directory of the relevant repositories, and put the following into each of them:

#!/bin/sh
git submodule update --init --recursive

Since you specfically asked for an alias, assuming you want to have this for many repositories, you can create an alias which adds these to a repository's .git/hooks for you.

As others have mentioned, you can easily set this with:

git config --global submodule.recurse true

However, if you're like me and have a more complex .gitconfig setup (my main ~/.gitconfig file uses include to load in other .gitconfig files), and you can never remember how to convert between the command-line git config format and the .gitconfig format, here's how to add it to any of your .gitconfig files:

[submodule]
  recurse = true

An alias, as suggested by Kevin Ballard, is a perfectly good solution. Just to toss another option out there, you could also use a post-merge hook which simply runs git submodule update [--init].

You can create an alias for the git command that automatically handles submodule updating. Add the following to your .bashrc

# make git submodules usable
#   This overwrites the 'git' command with modifications where necessary, and
#   calls the original otherwise
git() {
    if [[ $@ == clone* ]]; then
        gitargs=$(echo "$@" | cut -c6-)
        command git clone --recursive $gitargs
    elif [[ $@ == pull* ]]; then
        command git "$@" && git submodule update --init --recursive
    elif [[ $@ == checkout* ]]; then
        command git "$@" && git submodule update --init --recursive
    else
        command git "$@"
    fi
}

> As of Git 2.15, you could set submodule.recurse to true to enable the desired behaviour.

Actually, you won't have to do that.

Before Git 2.34 (Q4 2021), after "git clone --recurse-submodules"^(man), all submodules are cloned but they are not by default recursed into by other commands.

With Git 2.34, and submodule.stickyRecursiveClone configuration set, submodule.recurse configuration is set to true in a repository created by "clone" with "--recurse-submodules" option.

See commit 48072e3 (14 Aug 2021) by Mahi Kolla (24mahik).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 6d09fc5, 10 Sep 2021)}

> ## clone: set submodule.recurse=true if submodule.stickyRecursiveClone enabled
> ^{Signed-off-by: Mahi Kolla}

> Based on current experience, when running git clone --recurse-submodules^(man), developers do not expect other commands such as pull or checkout to run recursively into active submodules.
> > However, setting submodule.recurse=true at this step could make for a simpler workflow by eliminating the need for the --recurse-submodules option in subsequent commands.
> > To collect more data on developers' preference in regards to making submodule.recurse=true a default config value in the future, deploy this feature under the opt in submodule.stickyRecursiveClone flag.

Only way how I was able to get the submodules and nested submodules to update:

git submodule update --remote --merge --recursive; git submodule foreach --recursive "(git add .; git commit -m 'SubmoduleSync'; git push; git pull;);" git add .; git commit -m 'SubmodulesSynced'; git push; git pull;

I was struggling to create the alias through terminal due to the brackets so I had to manually add this to .gitconfig for global:

[alias] supdate = "!git submodule update --remote --merge --recursive; git submodule foreach --recursive '(git add .; git commit -m 'SubmoduleSync'; git push; git pull;);' git add .; git commit -m 'SubmodulesSynced'; git push; git pull;"

Any suggestions for how to run the commands or the alias automatically?