Libraries are not always a suitable solution. You just haven't worked on the same projects I have and you can't imagine all the things submodules are used for.
On top of that, I can't force all third party projects to turn their repos into nice easily installable packages. Especially if they're using a language that doesn't have a package manager.
Can't remember tbh. It was a work setup. It wasn't an unreasonable one though. 32 is not very many!