Copy git repo with sub-modules as directory into another repo

Question

Recently I cloned gRPC repo from GitHub which has various submodules like protobuf, zlib, etc. I have a different repo X of my own. Following is what I did.

1. copied gRPC folder into folder X
2. pushed the changes of X into origin master
3. cloned origin master into another repo Y
4. Now, I don't see contents of protbuf, zlib, etc. in Y

Seems I did something wrong in steps 2 and 3. All I wanted to do was put everything from gRPC into X as clean directory structure. What are the steps to accomplish this?

Answer 1

I removed all .git and .gitmodules from all directories that I wanted to be part of X. Then, for each of those folders did the following as explained in https://stackoverflow.com/a/31270959/4825809

git rm --cached directory
git add directory

Now I can see committed protobuf in fresh clone.