Getting rid of submodules

I'm not a fan of submodules. They do have their place, and they can be used in a good way. But they're cumbersome to use and they're too often used as a poor substitute for properly managing dependencies.

So here's how to delete a submodule from your repository that you've added for the wrong reason, or want to get rid of for any other reason.

• Delete the submodule from .gitmodules. If there are no more submodules left, remove the file completely.
• git add .gitmodules to tell git about the change
• rm -rf path/to/submodule to get rid of the files
• git rm -f --cached path/to/submodule to tell git to get rid of the files. Having to do this in two steps is one of the things that is cumbersome about submodules.
• git commit

Once you've committed that change, you will need to inspect .git/config and .git/modules for more leftovers that need removing.