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I was trying to download the boost release from https://github.com/boostorg/boost/releases and on downloading the release I saw that the submodules that it uses have not been initialized. Is this intentional?

Since all the relevant code for boost has beeb modularized into git submodules and they are each maintained in their own git repo. How then can I get the submodules off the github release (or initialize the submodules into the downloaded code)? Apparently the github git archive API does not support submodules for security reasons.

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Curious
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    Alternate solution - get the archive from [boost.org](http://www.boost.org/users/history/version_1_63_0.html), and if you want the source off github, use `git clone --recursive` – Praetorian Dec 31 '16 at 00:28
  • @Praetorian I knew about the boost.org release link, I was just curious why the github page had releases when they didn't contain all the code for the submodules :( – Curious Dec 31 '16 at 02:20
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    so what do you expect as an answer to this question? – eis Dec 31 '16 at 09:52
  • @eis the question I wanted to ask was how one is supposed to get the submodules from the github release of boost. I don't know if I was doing something wrong – Curious Dec 31 '16 at 09:55
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    @Curious but you do know? You yourself linked to thread explaining that github releases do not support them, and Praetorian commented on the alternate solution. So is there anything left to answer? – eis Dec 31 '16 at 09:58
  • The automatic archive which is provided by github is nor a real released archive, it's just automatic snapshot. For a typical source project it could also miss something like `./configure` script which usually not included in VCS but generated. The right way for them would be to attach their archives to the release in github. – max630 Jan 02 '17 at 06:42

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Like you commented, github releases do not support submodules.

Sources:

Like @Praetorian mentioned, alternate solution is to get the archive from boost, or just clone the source with submodules from github. You can clone off a tag or a branch to get specific version with git clone --branch my_abc http://git.abc.net/git/abc.git, and use --recursive to get submodules.

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eis
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  • Would you happen to know why boost does not want their releases to contain all the submodules? Or is that not something that they want to do entirely? – Curious Jan 02 '17 at 07:02
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    @Curious why do you say boost doesn't want? It's a limitation of github releases, not of boost. – eis Jan 02 '17 at 10:57