Blowfish fails to install as a Git Submodule: unable to checkout submodule 'themes/blowfish' and Hugo server not working.

[pranavnasrani]

Describe the bug
While downloading blowfish according to installation guides, the blowfish download fails with fatal error
fatal: unable to checkout submodule 'themes/blowfish'
All dependencies have been installed

/themes/blowfish empty along with all other folders.
While starting the server, nothing showed up with a Page Not Found error.

While testing site, error

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Install Hugo; latest version from official release binaries
2. run hugo newsite pranavblogs to create a site
3. change directory into the new site: cd pranavblogs
4. run 'git init`
5. attempt to download and add the github submodule using command:
   git submodule add -b main https://github.com/nunocoracao/blowfish.git themes/blowfish
6. attempt to start server after replacing toml files using hugo server -t blowfish

Expected behavior
Successful clone from github, with no errors. Contents in the cloned folders. Base theme webpage loading as does with other themes such as Paige, Terminal, etc.

Screenshots

The last line in this terminal snippet displays the error.
The Page not found error is also depicted.

Please do help with thise error as this theme is really cool. I am not aware if this a mistake on my part, and I would be very happy to get advice on how to do this right. have been trying for many days and hours.

Desktop (please complete the following information):

• OS: [e.g. Windows 11 Home]
• Browser [chrome]
• Version [chrome - 131.0.6778.86; windows - 23h2 Build no. 22631.4541]

Hugo & Blowfish versions
Latest releases from respective websites.
hugo v0.139.2-770f548b47b39e6f0fd4da1cc80552024e5829e1 windows/amd64 BuildDate=2024-11-23T15:33:51Z VendorInfo=gohugoio

Additional context
The /themes/blowfish folder is also empty. After downloading the recommended downloading toml files, the webpage still shows page not found. I have tested this with the terminal theme and other themes, and they work just fine.

[pranavnasrani]

EDIT: Tried the blowfish-tools (npx) as recommended on blowfish.page.

I think the same issue is being encountered. Even the blowfish tools use the same command to download and clone the theme, and since that fails, it isn't able to locate any required files (cloning fails), hence the whole command fails. This shows its not specific to the github submodules.

[schneekluth]

This is a duplicate #1842 and #1835. Problem only appears on Windows due to an invalid path containing a : character as you can also see in your screenshot. As a workaround do not use main branch but explicit release with tag 2.78.0 and everything runs fine:

[nunocoracao]

Fixing this in v2.80.0

[pranavnasrani]

@schneekluth @nunocoracao Thank you! This really helps