Git: can I suppress listing of 'modified content'/dirty submodule entries in status, diff, etc?

Question

Somewhen (around the 1.6.x releases, I think) git became aware of changes inside submodules. That only serves to annoy me:

$ git status vendor | grep modified:
#          


        

Answer 1

There are two kinds of change notices you can suppress.

The first is untracked content which happens when you make changes to your submodule but have not yet committed those. The parent repository notices these and git status reports it accordingly:

modified: modules/media (untracked content)

You can suppress these with :

[submodule "modules/media"]
   path = modules/media
   url = git@github.com:user/media.git
   ignore = dirty

However, once you commit those changes, the parent repository will once again take notice and report them accordingly:

modified:   modules/media (new commits)

If you want to suppress these too, you need to ignore all changes

[submodule "modules/media"]
   path = modules/media
   url = git@github.com:user/media.git
   ignore = all

Answer 2

You need to add

ignore = dirty

to .gitmodules

Answer 3

I've answered this question here in greater detail.

Just run

git config --global diff.ignoreSubmodules dirty

to add a local config option to ignore those changes.