How to delete history of commits inside a git submodule?

Question

I have a git project (with source files = markdown files published with hugo) with a submodule (linked to a "public/" folder, and containing only some generated files (that are then published to github pages through a dedicated github project)).

HOME : 
  .git/
  .gitmodules
  content/
  public/ -> linked to a submodule (no .git folder)

Submodule has been added through git submodule add -b slides <URL> public (per : https://gohugo.io/hosting-and-deployment/hosting-on-github/ )

Everything is working fine (i can commit and push source files and/or auto-generated files separately).

But i have a growing commit history for the content of the submodule folder (published in a dedicated project). Moreover this is 100% useless (being autogenerated all the time).

So is there a way to easily remove all these commits from the submodule, and only from it ?

Answer 1

The submodule is a local clone of the target repo.
Its git database is stored under .git/modules/<modulename> (instead of a .git directory under public/ ).

So :

1. the short answer is : "no there is no easy way"
2. if you want to keep it as a submodule : you can try to create a specific branch in the base repo, which would only keep some selected commits from the main branch
3. if you can afford to drop the dependency as a submodule : you may look into other ways to integrate this external repo ( git subtree for example)

All in all, I'm not sure if 2. or 3. are worth the effort in your situation.