I agree this would be useful as well! I'm not sure how much technical complexity it would add (I'm trying to think of ways that this could error in unexpected ways). If nothing glaring comes up as a possible downside, I'd be +1. Thanks for the idea!

In repo2docker we use --recursive as a flag when cloning which seems to "just work":

https://github.com/jupyter/repo2docker/blob/cc27548621cbad15a9b3d1725a891045b510ea6f/repo2docker/contentproviders/git.py#L22-L29

This is what a github blog post recommends to use. I don't use submodules at all so not sure what the state of the art is though.

The --recursive flag would be a sufficient solution to my problem and sounds like a fairly simple implementation.

Would you like to tackle this as a PR? Would be super welcome.

I think we can make it the default, like in repo2docker, as it seems to be harmless for repos that don't have submodules.

Yes, I can take on this PR. Not sure when I can do it though.

Hey @HaukurPall. Have you had any time since to work on this? :)

Thinking about this some more, what happens if the user has edited files inside the submodule? We would basically need to apply our merging logic recursively as well, rather than just run the submodule commands.

Hi @yuvipanda,
No, I have not worked on this.
I am unsure how git-submodules work in general and especially how they behave if the source repo refers to a different commit of a submodule, with uncommitted changes. [Opinion]: That being said, I think adding the merging logic to the submodules should be done separately, and potentially just when someone asks for it.

Thanks for responding, @HaukurPall.

Submodules are generally pretty tricky. Every time I thought I had understood them I have been wrong...

The automatic, 'no merge conflicts' invariant is a core part of nbgitpuller. Unless there are major reasons to not, I'd say we must support that before we can merge submodule support.

I am also interested in this feature.

git submodule update has three different modes: --merge, --rebase, --checkout.

I am not sure which one we should use. @yuvipanda what do you think? Which one is closest to nbgitpullers strategy?