I''ve found several web pages that describe how to use git submodules to install plugins, but it seems that those pages are missing something (or more likely, I am) . In a nutshell, they advise replacing $ script/plugin install git://path_to_spiffy_plugin with $ git submodule add git://path_to_spiffy_plugin vendor/plugins/spiffy_plugin It seems to me that these are not exactly equivalent... aren''t there installation scripts that get run when one runs "script/plugin install"? Is it as simple as manually looking for a vendor/plugins/spiffy_plugin/init.rb and running that script in Ruby? Or does it need to be run using (somehow) script/runner, so that the proper Rails environment is set up for the script. Are there other things that script/plugin install does? I notice that there is a -x option for script/plugin install, but that is specific to subversion. It doesn''t work with git. Finally, for anybody who stumbles across this post in the future, I believe that the equivalent to the "-r" option for script/plugin install is "-b" for git submodules add. e.g. $ script/plugin install git://github.com/ewildgoose/render_component.git -r rails-2.3 becomes $ git submodule add -b rails-2.3 git://github.com/ewildgoose/render_component.git vendor/plugins/render_component --wpd