Autoupdate / autoinit submodules?

Apologies if this has already been discussed, but did any of the proposed patches to allow .gitmodules to be configured for a submodule to be automatically recursive cloned and/or automatically updated on pull make it in yet?

My use-case for submodules - which is shared libraries - almost always requires a recursive clone, so having to remember the --recursive param (or to use an alias) is annoying (and I usually forget), and it usually requires pulling the latest master on a "git pull", too. I think both of these things should be able to be automated through git module configuration.