The question is old but as I fell on the same problem on Edison board is here my workaround, it may still interest some people.
The yocto version I am using for Edison is this one: https://github.com/edison-fw/meta-intel-edison
The problem happens because the git version on Edison board is missing some parts. In this case the git-submodules binary is missing in /usr/libexec/git-core
So once you have built the yocto image following the explanations you can find on the same link above (or here https://edison-fw.github.io/meta-intel-edison/) and flashed your board, you will have to copy the file git-submodules from your host pc to your edison board.
On your host, once in your build directory (path/to/edison/out/linux64/build), type:
find . -name "git-submodule"
And you will get different locations for the same file. Take one of it.
Copy it on the edison board to /usr/libexec/git-core.
Now the git with submodule should hopefully work...
UPDATE:
Ferry answer is better but in someways it does not work on my side (yocto sumo). Package git-perltools
is part of git
package, so no need to add it to your core-image, but it is still not installed. I found that package git-perltools
depends on findutils
to be installed, so adding findutils
to core-image might be needed for Ferry's answer to work.
NB:
I would have preferred to comment Ferry answer, but I don't have the rights.