Add repos but not as normal files, not submodule

Hi there. 

I have a special situation (maven git scm provider) where I have sub directories with git repps in them which I use as data to run tests on. 

Is it possible to track these "internal" repos without using submodules? 

The only alternative I see is to compress all the test repos in an archive and track that - but that's not nice.

Upon trying to "Add" the internal repos to track, I get error: Invalid path for example: antony-stubbss-macbook-pro-4:buildnumber-maven-plugin antonystubbs$ git add src/test/test-repositories/git/branch-tests-japanese/.git/config error: Invalid path 'src/test/test-repositories/git/branch-tests-japanese/.git/config' error: unable to add src/test/test-repositories/git/branch-tests-japanese/.git/config to index fatal: adding files failed

The reason I don't want to do submodules is that I don't want to have the submodules as serperate projects as such, because they're not. they're "test data" so to speak.

Cheers, Antony.