Git submodule update

Question

I\'m not clear on what the following means (from the Git submodule update documentation):

...will make the submodules HEAD be detached, unless -

Answer 1

Git 1.8.2 features a new option ,--remote, that will enable exactly this behavior. Running

git submodule update --rebase --remote

will fetch the latest changes from upstream in each submodule, rebase them, and check out the latest revision of the submodule. As the documentation puts it:

--remote

This option is only valid for the update command. Instead of using the superproject’s recorded SHA-1 to update the submodule, use the status of the submodule’s remote-tracking branch.

This is equivalent to running git pull in each submodule, which is generally exactly what you want.

(This was copied from this answer.)