If you control the dependency and if you're the primary user, just move it into your repository by merging with unrelated histories. If you're not controlling

If you control the dependency and if you're the primary user, just move it into your repository by merging with unrelated histories. If you're not controlling the dependency, you can still merge the dependency with an unrelated history on every version upgrade. This will still likely consume less time than fighting submodules every day.