# Git submodules

14 Hacker News commenters recommended Git submodules and 13 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Recommended for referencing other repositories inside one project and for simple, built-in setup with Git. Critics agree they are awkward, buggy in places and painful to use day to day.

## Why people recommend it

- Brings other repos into one project (2 comments): "It gives me a monorepo experience in repos that otherwise aren't/can't exist as one monorepo for various reasons." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49924610)) "They're the best way we have to reference other repositories from one repository." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49924621))
- Simple and easy to set up (2 comments): "Super easy. Also makes it straightforward to develop patches to send upstream from within your project." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47591023)) "They're not hard to work with." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49924957))
- Designed well for their purpose (3 comments): "they're extremely useful and designed basically exactly how you'd want" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49576772)) "I think submodules are good enough for what they do" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49581145)) "they still make more sense. The are composable!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46437572))

## What people warn about

- Painful, awkward and miserable to use (9 comments): "Submodules aren't perfect and can be really annoying. I tried to avoid them at first." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49578566)) "working with git submodules is such an needlessly miserable experience" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47205383)) "One is easy and the other is about as fun as having teeth extracted." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49924959))
- Gotchas and inherited Git flaws (4 comments): "Kind of feels like there's little point using it if it's just going to copy Git's mistakes." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50235728)) "git submodule implementation has even more hairs than worktrees" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47773195)) "Git submodules are the regular expressions of version control." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48574273))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Git worktree](https://hackerapproved.com/p/git-worktrees.md): 58 recommend
- [git rebase](https://hackerapproved.com/p/git-rebase.md): 24 recommend
- [git rerere](https://hackerapproved.com/p/git-rerere.md): 19 recommend
- [git add -p](https://hackerapproved.com/p/git-add-p.md): 13 recommend
- [Git notes](https://hackerapproved.com/p/git-notes.md): 11 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Git submodules", https://hackerapproved.com/p/git-submodules/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).