Is there a way to automatically have git submodule update (or preferably git submodule update --init called whenever git pull is done?

Looking for a git config setting, or a git alias to help with this.

As of Git 2.14, you can use git pull --recurse-submodules (and alias it to whatever you like).

As of Git 2.15, you could set submodule.recurse to true to enable the desired behaviour.

You can do this globally by running:

git config --global submodule.recurse true