[irrationalidiom]

having a controlled state for foreign repos is absolutely essential.

having worked with all-in-one repos, where external stuff is thown in... then rots... submodules are a better way, making keeping external code up to date. simple yet controlled.

[andywhite37]

Yeah, I agree, submodules prevent the copy and paste rot that can happen when you copy library code directly into your repo. We've been using submodules for most of our projects, and I don't think they are that bad as long as you are just a little extra careful with managing them.