Using submodules with GitHub Pages

You can use submodules with GitHub Pages to include other projects in your site's code.

Who can use this feature?

GitHub Pages is available in public repositories with GitHub Free and GitHub Free for organizations, and in public and private repositories with GitHub Pro, GitHub Team, GitHub Enterprise Cloud, and GitHub Enterprise Server. For more information, see GitHub’s plans.

GitHub Pages now uses GitHub Actions to execute the Jekyll build. When using a branch as the source of your build, GitHub Actions must be enabled in your repository if you want to use the built-in Jekyll workflow. Alternatively, if GitHub Actions is unavailable or disabled, adding a .nojekyll file to the root of your source branch will bypass the Jekyll build process and deploy the content directly. For more information on enabling GitHub Actions, see Managing GitHub Actions settings for a repository.

If the repository for your GitHub Pages site contains submodules, their contents will automatically be pulled in when your site is built.

You can only use submodules that point to public repositories, because the GitHub Pages server cannot access private repositories.

Use the https:// read-only URL for your submodules, including nested submodules. You can make this change in your .gitmodules file.

Further reading