Exactly: they're so appealing the first time you find out about the feature. "Oh, i can just go `git submodule add <repo> <path>` and it includes another repo!

Exactly: they're so appealing the first time you find out about the feature. "Oh, i can just go `git submodule add <repo> <path>` and it includes another repo! Very cool!", and then two months later you're staring at the 427th time submodules have caused weird issues when changing branches or whatever, and you just want to hurl your computer into the sea. A hacked-together bash script like you suggested is a far better solution.