How to clone a public GitHub repository recursively without authentication?

Question

I am trying to deploy an application from GitHub into a test server. I have created a new user in the server to own the local repository and run the application. Later on this user should also perform a daily pull from the repository automatically.

I am able to run a simple git clone from the repository with this new user. However, when I try to get all its sub-modules (git clone --recursive) I get this error:

Permission denied (publickey).
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
Clone of 'git@github.com:organisation/submodule.git' into submodule path 'submodule' failed

All the sub-modules are also public repositories at GitHub, that I am able to clone individually to the server with this new user. Why can't they be cloned as sub-modules?

Answer 1

Your submodule is configured to clone using git: - update .gitmodules to reference the https: URL instead. Change:

git@github.com:organisation/submodule.git

to

https://github.com/organisation/submodule.git