How to make setuptools clone git dependencies recursively?

Question

I want to let setuptools install Phoenix in my project and thus added

setup(
    ...
    dependency_links = [
        "git+https://github.com/wxWidgets/Phoenix.git#egg=Phoenix"
    ],
    install_requires = ["Phoenix"],
    ...
)

to my setup.py, but Phoenix' setuptools setup depends on a recursive git clone. How to tell the setuptools setup of my project to do git clone --recursive for Phoenix?

Defining a git alias with git config --global alias.clone 'clone --recursive' doesn't change anything.

I'm using setuptools 18.2 with python 2.7 on Ubuntu 15.04.

Answer 1

I finally found an answer that could solve this! This blog post explains it. It assumes though that you have access to the source code Phoenix in this case. Essentially, you have to apply the following addition to Phoenix's setup.py. It doesn't help applying it to your setup.py sadly. In short:

from setuptools.command.develop import develop
from setuptools.command.install import install
from setuptools.command.sdist import sdist

def gitcmd_update_submodules():
    ''' Check if the package is being deployed as a git repository. If so, recursively
        update all dependencies.

        @returns True if the package is a git repository and the modules were updated.
            False otherwise.
    '''
    if os.path.exists(os.path.join(HERE, '.git')):
        check_call(['git', 'submodule', 'update', '--init', '--recursive'])
        return True

    return False


class GitCmdDevelop(develop):
    def run(self):
        gitcmd_update_submodules()
        develop.run(self)


class GitCmdInstall(install):
    def run(self):
        gitcmd_update_submodules()
        install.run(self)


class GitCmdSDist(sdist):
    def run(self):
        gitcmd_update_submodules()
        sdist.run(self)

setup(
    cmdclass={
        'develop': GitCmdDevelop, 
        'install': GitCmdInstall, 
        'sdist': GitCmdSDist,
    },
    ...
)