Noticed as part of my automated tests here: https://travis-ci.org/pre-commit/pre-commit/jobs/173957051 Minimal reproduction: rm -rf /tmp/git /tmp/foo /tmp/bar git clone git://github.com/git/git --depth 1 /tmp/git pushd /tmp/git make -j 8 popd export PATH="/tmp/git:$PATH" git init /tmp/foo git init /tmp/bar cd /tmp/foo git submodule add /tmp/bar baz Output: $ rm -rf /tmp/git /tmp/foo /tmp/bar $ git clone git://github.com/git/git --depth 1 /tmp/git Cloning into '/tmp/git'... remote: Counting objects: 3074, done. remote: Compressing objects: 100% (2735/2735), done. remote: Total 3074 (delta 249), reused 1871 (delta 215), pack-reused 0 Receiving objects: 100% (3074/3074), 6.38 MiB | 905.00 KiB/s, done. Resolving deltas: 100% (249/249), done. Checking connectivity... done. $ pushd /tmp/git /tmp/git /tmp $ make -j 8 GIT_VERSION = 2.11.0-rc0 ... lots of make output ... $ popd /tmp $ export PATH="/tmp/git:$PATH" $ git init /tmp/foo warning: templates not found /home/asottile/share/git-core/templates Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/foo/.git/ $ git init /tmp/bar warning: templates not found /home/asottile/share/git-core/templates Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/bar/.git/ $ cd /tmp/foo $ git submodule add /tmp/bar baz /tmp/git/git-submodule: 46: .: Can't open /home/asottile/libexec/git-core/git-sh-i18n $ echo $? 2 Thanks Anthony