git submodules: how to remove a submodule

Deleting a git submodule is a potentially confusing aspect of working with them. This is because while they can be removed from some branches, it’s possible that other branches will still expect them to be there — which results in “git yelling at you.”

One approach to this problem I found was:

1. Deinitialize the submodule,
2. Remove the submodule’s directory from from .git/modules in the main project
3. Finally, delete the directory related to the (now former) submodule.

As an example, if we have a .gitmodules that looks like this:

[submodule "my-submodule"]
    path = my-submodule
    url = git@github.com:stephencweiss/my-submodule.git

How might we remove it? A condensed view would look like:

git submodule deinit -f my-submodule
rm -rf .git/modules/my-submodule
git rm -f my-submodule

This would need to be updated if the name of the submodule or its path were not the defaults. Git Submodules: Exploring the Add API