如何重新创建已删除的.gitmodule文件？

Question

I have a submodule in my repo, and I think I inadvertently deleted the .gitmodules file.

I don't want to do git submodule add <git@git:...> because that will pull the original repo for the submodule into the folder and erase the changes I made to the submodule. So all I want to do is just re-create the .gitmodules file.

How do I re-create it?

Answer 1

Was the file committed to the repository? If so, you can probably do something like git checkout -- .gitmodules from the root of the repository.

If the .gitmodules file was not committed to the repository, you will probably have to rebuild it by hand. Luckily, most of the information that you need can be found in .git/config :

...
[submodule "vendor/foo"]
        url = https://somesite.tld/user/repository.git
...

For each of your submodules, copy this section from .git/config into .gitmodules . Then add a new line path under each section pointing to the location of the module within your repository:

...
[submodule "vendor/foo"]
        path = vendor/foo
        url = https://somesite.tld/user/repository.git
...

That should get you pretty close to where you were before deleting your .gitmodules file. You can verify that you've got it right with git submodule status . If your paths are set incorrectly, you will get something like

No submodule mapping found in .gitmodules for path 'vendor/foo'

If your .gitmodules is set up correctly, you should see something like

0123456789abcdef01234567890abcdef0123456 vendor/foo (heads/master)

Now that you've got everything sorted out, commit that .gitmodules file! It should be part of your repository.