Can I have a cloned git repo inside my own repo?

Question

Say I've got a project under git version control. Within that project, I have a folder called "third_party_tools." And within that folder, I've got a folder called "some_open_source_tool," which was cloned from github.

Will this cause problems? Can I check the tool into git for my project and retain the ability to pull from github if there are updates? Or is it not permitted to have one git repo inside another?

Answer 1

It is permitted to have one git repository inside another. If you want to check the tool into your outer project, I would recommend you look into submodules, which allow you to keep nested git projects in sync properly.