You find the current state of this series in the [[recusive_submodule_update|https://github.com/jlehmann/git-submod-enhancements/tree/recursive_submodule_checkout]] branch in this repo. **Be warned: the code is still experimental and might damage your data!** Especially when removing a submodule on checkout all untracked files inside it will be lost! (and it'll stay that way until the discussed ignored-but-precious attribute is implemented in Git) Having said that, I already use this code for quite some time at my dayjob and it's working fine for me. *Stuff that's currently known not to work:* * Interactive rebase doesn't update submodule work trees * A recreated submodule won't appear on first checkout (but it will on the second checkout; a fix for that is being worked on) * A non-interactive rebase empties changed submodules Please mail me if you find another problem so we can take care of it (patches are also welcome ;-). *How to test it* Just check out the [[recusive_submodule_update|https://github.com/jlehmann/git-submod-enhancements/tree/recursive_submodule_checkout]] and put a "return 1" in the first line of submodule_needs_update() in submodule.c in a commit on top of it (this enables unconditional recursive checkout and will be needed until the configuration options are implemented and mature enough; but currently it breaks quite some tests).