I'm trying to convert a unversioned subdirectory of a git project clone into a submodule. The straightforward way would be to move it out, create a project and re-add this project as a submodule. Is there a way to do this in place, e.g. avoid moving, copying locally and transferring most of the data again from the server?
Example:
I have a git project named "test" cloned to a directory "test", where the only versioned file is readme.md. Hoewver, there's a huge subdirectory testsm which i'd like to create a git project "testsm" for and then add it as a submodule in the folder "test/testsm".
/test
/readme.md (versioned)
/testsm/* (yet unversioned)
You can add an existing git repository with git submodule add.
In your case, you first need to create a new git repo with git init in the testsm directory. You will also need to create at least one commit.
You will then have this structure:
base
`- .git
`- readme.md
`- testsm
`- .git
`- other files...
Once you are there, you can add the submodule with:
git submodule add ./testsm
git commit # To actually commit the changes
The following steps are optional.
If you need to set an upstream url, you can use the git submodule set-url command to set the submodule URL to what you want.
You can also move the testsm/.git repository to the parent .git repository with git submodule absorbgitdirs.