Short and easy tutorial for using private submodules on Vercel

Edit your .gitmodules to follow this schema:

[submodule "<repo-name>"]
path = <folder-name>
url = https://<github-token>@github.com/<owner-name>/<repo-name>.git

The important part is the <github-token> in https://<github-token>@github.com/<owner-name>/<repo-name>.git

You can use either a classic token or a fine-grained token with necessary permissions.

💡 TIP: If you dont know how to get it have a look at this

Use this trick - add .gitmodules to .gitignore and then put the whole contents of the .gitmodules in a GitHub Secret or a secret on Vercel, and then when installing dependencies and doing setup, do smthn like echo '${{ secrets.GITMODULES }}' > .gitmodules

🤝🏽 Thanks @FrameMuse [Issue: #7]

• copy the ./vercel-submodule-workaround.sh to the root of your project

• make sure the file is executable - run this command:

  chmod u+x vercel-submodule-workaround.sh

• in your package.json add a script:

  {
      "scripts":{
          "vercel-install": "./vercel-submodule-workaround.sh && yarn --ignore-scripts --production=false",
      }
  }

  Info:

  --production=false ensures that dev-dependencies will be installed, if you dont need your dev-dependencies to install then just delete this flag.

  --ignore-scripts ignores pre and post install scripts if you want the scripts to run delete this flag.

• Tell Vercel to use vercel-install instead of the defalt install command

  • project -> Settings -> General => Build & Development Settings

  • in INSTALL COMMAND type

  yarn vercel-install 
  # or 
  npm vercel-install

  • toggle OVERRIDE on

• Create a Github access token

  • Settings -> Developer settings -> Personal access tokens

  • Generate new token

  • set a note (eg. vercel)

  • set expiration to whatever you see fit (eg. No expiration)

  • select repo

    [x] repo - Full control of private repositories

  • copy the generated token

• Add the token to Vercel Environment Variables

  • Project -> Settings -> Environment Variables

  • add a new variable called GITHUB_ACCESS_TOKEN and with value of the token you just copied

I haven't added support for multiple submodules but it should be easy enough, try edditing this part and then the rest of the script.

# get submodule commit
output=`git submodule status --recursive` # get submodule info
no_prefix=${output#*-} # get rid of the prefix
COMMIT=${no_prefix% *} # get rid of the suffix