title: Nested git repositories without remotes (a.k.a. git submodule without remotes)
body: <p>I have a project of which I am interested in breaking out portions as open-source. I've set up nested git repositories main, one, two and three:</p>
  <pre><code>main/
  ├── one
  ├── three
  └── two
  </code></pre>
  <p>I thought that by going into &quot;main&quot; and doing</p>
  <pre><code>git add one
  git add two
  git add three
  </code></pre>
  <p>(note the lack of trailing slashes), I'd set up submodules with the sub-repositories and be good to go.</p>
  <p>However, as noted in <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4161022/git-how-to-track-untracked-content/4162672#4162672">How to track untracked content?</a>, this only creates gitlinks and not real submodules.</p>
  <p>Unfortunately, that answer doesn't help, as it assumes that there is a &quot;master&quot; repository somewhere <em>else</em> for &quot;main/one&quot;, &quot;main/two&quot;, and &quot;main/three&quot;. I'd like these sub-repo's to <em>be</em> the master repositories. I'm considering fake submodules (as per <a href="http://debuggable.com/posts/git-fake-submodules:4b563ee4-f3cc-4061-967e-0e48cbdd56cb" rel="noreferrer">Git fake submodules</a>), but that's not a particularly ideal situation for cloning.</p>
  <p>Any other suggestions out there?</p>