title: git submodule update not functioning
body: <p>I have a repository with various nested submodules. Committing and pushing works pretty well and the changes are visible at GitHub as expected.</p>
  
  <p>In the testing/production environments, new releases of this project are being deployed using these commands:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git pull --recurse-submodules
  git submodule update --init --recursive
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But this only updates the root project, none of the submodules are updated to the commits associated with the HEAD at GitHub. So far the only way I have found to update the whole project is to run <code>git pull</code> inside each individual submodule folder.</p>
  
  <p>I understand that <code>git submodule update</code> is the method referenced in most places, but it is not really producing any results in this case. What could be the cause?</p>