Re: missing git documentation for "git clone --recursive"

On Mon, Feb 9, 2026 at 3:35 PM [off-list ref] wrote:

Hi,

I am missing the argument "--recursive" for the git clone command in the
git-clone documentation

https://git-scm.com/docs/git-clone

Is this --recursive argument outdated? In some projects there is the
following command in the documentation that clones the repository
including init and update submodules:

git clone --recursive (url)

In the git documentation only "--recurse-submodules" is mentioned as
allowed argument, but not "--recursive".

Thanks

Markus

The latter is a (now-undocumented) alias for the former. See
5c387428f1 (parse-options: don't emit "ambiguous option" for aliases,
2019-04-29) and referenced commits (like ccdd3da652 (clone: Add the
--recurse-submodules option as alias for --recursive, 2010-11-04)) for
some details.

-- 
D. Ben Knoble