It sounds like the author of this article is trying to use git submodules to replace a package manager. Of course you'll get annoyed with git submodules if you

It sounds like the author of this article is trying to use git submodules to replace a package manager. Of course you'll get annoyed with git submodules if you have something like cargo available. Unfortunately, there are languages (C and C++) where package management sucks and git submodules are a godsend. > Provide an ad-hoc in-tree script to download the dependency Add this to the list of things I hate. The last thing I want to do when adding a library as a dependency is figure out that it requires Python to download some source, then uses a makefile to build everything, and has a "nice" bash script to tie everything together. If I see that crap, I'm not using your library. This (contrary to what the developer may be thinking) does not make it easier to integrate the library into my project. It makes it so so much more difficult. Please. Don't. > Yes, really, git submodule is worse than ad-hoc Makefile runes Please don't make monstrous makefiles that do a million and 1 things and do them all terribly and don't have any modicum of support for cross platform functionalities. This is terrible advice. If your language has a package manager, use it. But in my experience, with a language like C or C++ git submodules are the perfect tool for the job and definitely more preferable than hacked together makefiles that do everything except build the source. Tldr; this sounds like a blog post from somebody that tried to use submodules to replace a package manager. If you have a package manager, use it. Otherwise, thank God for submodules.