I have a documentation repository on github which submodules other project repositories.
I want that everytime there is a change in any projectname/docs/*, it automatically be reflected in my documentation repository's submodules. Do I have to setup a jenkins job for this (git submodule update) or does submodule do this automatically when its upstream on github?
You will need to manually update the submodule.
The reason for this is that, internally, Git stores the specific commit of the submodule. You can see this by examining a commit using cat-file:
> git log
commit a087a65925c16f142f402ef1afe633062ad8fb2c
Author: J Doe <[email protected]>
Date: Wed Dec 7 07:10:05 2016 -0500
add submodule
commit 2ecbda2119ca9771a0a2ad0a8bf567aa5ce22950
Author: J Doe <[email protected]>
Date: Wed Dec 7 07:09:58 2016 -0500
initial commit
> git cat-file -p a087a65925c16f142f402ef1afe633062ad8fb2c
tree f34a4a6d49ff5da8042f39a9d59f6c7d6ee8e3ff
parent 2ecbda2119ca9771a0a2ad0a8bf567aa5ce22950
author J Doe <[email protected]> 1481112605 -0500
committer J Doe <[email protected]> 1481112605 -0500
add submodule
> git cat-file -p f34a4a6d49ff5da8042f39a9d59f6c7d6ee8e3ff
100644 blob 067a7e62bbe3b1f119c5e12ffb52a8896102923f .gitmodules
160000 commit 8e7395f127fa8bd5d1370c69e7ebfd20afd6b45f 15774-a
100644 blob e69de29bb2d1d6434b8b29ae775ad8c2e48c5391 bar
There's also the .gitmodules file, which identifies the various submodules but says nothing about their current state:
[submodule "15774-a"]
path = 15774-a
url = file:///tmp/15774-a
This behavior makes perfect sense if you think of submodules as a tool for including a specific version of a dependency into your source tree. However, a package manager (Maven, npn, Nuget, whatever) is generally a better approach.
You can pull updates to the submodule with git submodule update
See also: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Submodules
