Inability to clone or branch parts of a repository

6/10 Medium

Git's 'one repo is one project' policy prevents partial clones or branches. Teams must maintain multiple Git repositories for multiple projects, forcing manual tracking and introducing submodule complexity. This makes migrations from SVN extremely difficult.

Gitsubmodules
Category
architecture
Workaround
hack
Stage
onboarding
Freshness
persistent
Scope
single_lib
Upstream
wontfix
Recurring
Yes
Buyer Type
team

Sources

Collection History

Query: “What are the most common pain points with Git for developers in 2025?”4/5/2026

Unlike SVN/Perforce/TFS/etc., in Git you cannot clone, tag or branch just a part of the repository. You can only branch or tag the whole thing. This led to introduction of another new concept: the submodule, with its own set of operations and command line switches.

Created: 4/5/2026Updated: 4/5/2026