Signed-off-by: Stefan Beller <redacted>
---
 Documentation/git-checkout.txt |  7 +++++++
 builtin/checkout.c             | 28 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 t/lib-submodule-update.sh      | 33 ++++++++++++++++++++++++---------
 t/t2013-checkout-submodule.sh  |  5 +++++
 4 files changed, 64 insertions(+), 9 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/git-checkout.txt b/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
index 8e2c0662dd..d6399c0af8 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-checkout.txt

@@ -256,6 +256,13 @@ section of linkgit:git-add[1] to learn how to operate the `--patch` mode.
 	out anyway. In other words, the ref can be held by more than one
 	worktree.
 
+--[no-]recurse-submodules::
+	Using --recurse-submodules will update the content of all initialized
+	submodules according to the commit recorded in the superproject. If
+	local modifications in a submodule would be overwritten the checkout
+	will fail unless `-f` is used. If nothing (or --no-recurse-submodules)
+	is used, the work trees of submodules will not be updated.
+
 <branch>::
 	Branch to checkout; if it refers to a branch (i.e., a name that,
 	when prepended with "refs/heads/", is a valid ref), then that

diff --git a/builtin/checkout.c b/builtin/checkout.c
index f174f50303..207ce09771 100644
--- a/builtin/checkout.c
+++ b/builtin/checkout.c

@@ -21,12 +21,31 @@
 #include "submodule-config.h"
 #include "submodule.h"
 
+static int recurse_submodules = RECURSE_SUBMODULES_DEFAULT;
+
 static const char * const checkout_usage[] = {
 	N_("git checkout [<options>] <branch>"),
 	N_("git checkout [<options>] [<branch>] -- <file>..."),
 	NULL,
 };
 
+int option_parse_recurse_submodules(const struct option *opt,
+				    const char *arg, int unset)