Restore git submodules from .gitmodules

Question

I have a folder, which was a git repo. It contains some files and .gitmodules file. Now, when I do git init and then git submodule init, the latter

Answer 1

For zsh users, try my function which has DRY_RUN=1 support to see what commands will be ran and only uses git to parse the file instead of sed.

gsub_file() {(
  set -eu

  cd "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)"

  submodule_paths=(
    "${(@f)$(git config --file ./.gitmodules --get-regexp "path" | awk '{ print $2 }')}"
  )
  submodule_urls=(
    "${(@f)$(git config --file ./.gitmodules --get-regexp "url" | awk '{ print $2 }')}"
  )
  submodule_branches=(
    "${(@f)$(git config --file ./.gitmodules --get-regexp "branch" | awk '{ print $2 }')}"
  )

  sh_c() {
    echo + "$*"
    if [ "${DRY_RUN-}" ]; then
      return
    fi
    eval "$@"
  }

  for (( i=1; i <= ${#submodule_paths[@]}; i++ )) do
    p="${submodule_paths[$i]}"
    if [ -d "$p" ]; then
      continue
    fi

    url="${submodule_urls[$i]}"
    unset b
    if [ "${submodule_branches[$i]-}" ]; then
      b="-b ${submodule_branches[$i]}" 
    fi
    sh_c git submodule add "${b-}" "$url" "$p"
  done
)}