unwanted subfolder when adding a git submodule

Question

I am trying to add a git submodule. The submodule itself works without any problem but my question is about the created layout when adding the submodule.

I am adding a simple submodule called utils that only contains a file.

I am using this

git submodule add --force ssh://myserver/home/git_repositories/utils js/utils

because I want to add the submodule utils into the js/utils folder

the problem is that after doing this operation, inside of the js/utils folder i find another folder called utils, like js/utils/utils and there I find my javascript.

I want to have a layout like js/utils/ and here my javascript.

I have tried to eliminate the /utils in the git submodule add like

git submodule add --force ssh://myserver/home/git_repositories/utils js/

but then git yields

'js' already exists in the index

Do you know any way to avoid that secondary /utils?

Thanks a lot in advance!

prussian blue

Answer 1

I have found that the problem was in my original utils repo.

Apparently I forgot to do git init in that particular folder and therefore it was getting the parent as root level, thus creating that extra unwanted /utils

To solve this, I simply had to do git init inside of the utils folder, git add . , git commit and push. When pulling as a submodule, now it has the right layout!

My bad! Hope this helps someone and many thanks for your help guys.

Answer 2

Try this:

1. remove section for this subrepo from .gitmodules file;
2. remove section for this subrepo from .git/config file;
3. git rm --cached submodule_path ;
4. rm -rf submodule_path