git-clone(1)

NAME#

git-clone - Clone a repository into a new directory

SYNOPSIS#

git clone\n [\n--template=\n<template-directory>\n]
\n
          [\n-l\n] [\n-s\n] [\n--no-hardlinks\n] [\n-q\n] [\n-n\n] [\n--bare\n] [\n--mirror\n]
\n
          [\n-o\n \n<name>\n] [\n-b\n \n<name>\n] [\n-u\n \n<upload-pack>\n] [\n--reference\n \n<repository>\n]
\n
          [\n--dissociate\n] [\n--separate-git-dir\n \n<git-dir>\n]
\n
          [\n--depth\n \n<depth>\n] [\n--\n[\nno-\n]\nsingle-branch\n] [\n--no-tags\n]
\n
          [\n--recurse-submodules\n[\n=\n<pathspec>\n]] [\n--\n[\nno-\n]\nshallow-submodules\n]
\n
          [\n--\n[\nno-\n]\nremote-submodules\n] [\n--jobs\n \n<n>\n] [\n--sparse\n] [\n--\n[\nno-\n]\nreject-shallow\n]
\n
          [\n--filter=\n<filter-spec>\n] [\n--also-filter-submodules\n]] [\n--\n] \n<repository>\n
\n
          [\n<directory>\n]

DESCRIPTION#

Clones a repository into a newly created directory, creates remote-tracking branches for each branch in the cloned repository (visible using git branch --remotes), and creates and checks out an initial branch that is forked from the cloned repository’s currently active branch.

After the clone, a plain git fetch without arguments will update all the remote-tracking branches, and a git pull without arguments will in addition merge the remote master branch into the current master branch, if any (this is untrue when --single-branch is given; see below).

This default configuration is achieved by creating references to the remote branch heads under refs/remotes/origin and by initializing remote.origin.url and remote.origin.fetch configuration variables.

OPTIONS#

-l, --local

If the repository is specified as a local path (e.g., /path/to/repo), this is the default, and --local is essentially a no-op. If the repository is specified as a URL, then this flag is ignored (and we never use the local optimizations). Specifying --no-local will override the default when /path/to/repo is given, using the regular Git transport instead.

If the repository’s $GIT_DIR/objects has symbolic links or is a symbolic link, the clone will fail. This is a security measure to prevent the unintentional copying of files by dereferencing the symbolic links.

NOTE: this operation can race with concurrent modification to the source repository, similar to running cp -r src dst while modifying src.

--no-hardlinks

-s, --shared

NOTE: this is a possibly dangerous operation; do not use it unless you understand what it does. If you clone your repository using this option and then delete branches (or use any other Git command that makes any existing commit unreferenced) in the source repository, some objects may become unreferenced (or dangling). These objects may be removed by normal Git operations (such as git commit) which automatically call git maintenance run --auto. (See git-maintenance(1).) If these objects are removed and were referenced by the cloned repository, then the cloned repository will become corrupt.

Note that running git repack without the --local option in a repository cloned with --shared will copy objects from the source repository into a pack in the cloned repository, removing the disk space savings of clone --shared. It is safe, however, to run git gc, which uses the --local option by default.

If you want to break the dependency of a repository cloned with --shared on its source repository, you can simply run git repack -a to copy all objects from the source repository into a pack in the cloned repository.

--reference[-if-able] <repository>

NOTE: see the NOTE for the --shared option, and also the --dissociate option.

--dissociate

-q, --quiet

-v, --verbose

--progress

--server-option=<option>

-n, --no-checkout

--[no-]reject-shallow

--bare

--sparse

--filter=<filter-spec>

--also-filter-submodules

--mirror

-o<name>, --origin<name>

-b<name>, --branch<name>

-u<upload-pack>, --upload-pack<upload-pack>

--template=<template-directory>

-c<key>=<value>, --config<key>=<value>

Due to limitations of the current implementation, some configuration variables do not take effect until after the initial fetch and checkout. Configuration variables known to not take effect are: remote.<name>.mirror and remote.<name>.tagOpt. Use the corresponding --mirror and --no-tags options instead.

--depth<depth>

--shallow-since=<date>

--shallow-exclude=<revision>

--[no-]single-branch

--no-tags

Can be used in conjunction with --single-branch to clone and maintain a branch with no references other than a single cloned branch. This is useful e.g. to maintain minimal clones of the default branch of some repository for search indexing.

--recurse-submodules[=<pathspec>]

Submodules are initialized and cloned using their default settings. This is equivalent to running git submodule update --init --recursive <pathspec> immediately after the clone is finished. This option is ignored if the cloned repository does not have a worktree/checkout (i.e. if any of --no-checkout/-n, --bare, or --mirror is given)

--[no-]shallow-submodules

--[no-]remote-submodules

--separate-git-dir=<git-dir>

--ref-format=<ref-format>

-j<n>, --jobs<n>

<repository>

<directory>

--bundle-uri=<uri>

GIT URLS#

In general, URLs contain information about the transport protocol, the address of the remote server, and the path to the repository. Depending on the transport protocol, some of this information may be absent.

Git supports ssh, git, http, and https protocols (in addition, ftp and ftps can be used for fetching, but this is inefficient and deprecated; do not use them).

The native transport (i.e. git:// URL) does no authentication and should be used with caution on unsecured networks.

The following syntaxes may be used with them:

An alternative scp-like syntax may also be used with the ssh protocol:

This syntax is only recognized if there are no slashes before the first colon. This helps differentiate a local path that contains a colon. For example the local path foo:bar could be specified as an absolute path or ./foo:bar to avoid being misinterpreted as an ssh url.

The ssh and git protocols additionally support ~<username> expansion:

For local repositories, also supported by Git natively, the following syntaxes may be used:

These two syntaxes are mostly equivalent, except the former implies --local option.

git clone, git fetch and git pull, but not git push, will also accept a suitable bundle file. See git-bundle(1).

When Git doesn’t know how to handle a certain transport protocol, it attempts to use the remote-<transport> remote helper, if one exists. To explicitly request a remote helper, the following syntax may be used:

where <address> may be a path, a server and path, or an arbitrary URL-like string recognized by the specific remote helper being invoked. See gitremote-helpers(7) for details.

If there are a large number of similarly-named remote repositories and you want to use a different format for them (such that the URLs you use will be rewritten into URLs that work), you can create a configuration section of the form:

\n
        [url "\n<actual-url-base>\n"]
\n
                insteadOf = \n<other-url-base>

For example, with this:

\n
        [url "git://git.host.xz/"]
\n
                insteadOf = host.xz:/path/to/
\n
                insteadOf = work:

a URL like "work:repo.git" or like "host.xz:/path/to/repo.git" will be rewritten in any context that takes a URL to be "git://git.host.xz/repo.git".

If you want to rewrite URLs for push only, you can create a configuration section of the form:

\n
        [url "\n<actual-url-base>\n"]
\n
                pushInsteadOf = \n<other-url-base>

For example, with this:

\n
        [url "ssh://example.org/"]
\n
                pushInsteadOf = git://example.org/

a URL like "git://example.org/path/to/repo.git" will be rewritten to "ssh://example.org/path/to/repo.git" for pushes, but pulls will still use the original URL.

EXAMPLES#

$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/.../linux.git my-linux
$ cd my-linux
$ make

$ git clone -l -s -n . ../copy
$ cd ../copy
$ git show-branch

$ git clone --reference /git/linux.git \
\n
        git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/.../linux.git \
\n
        my-linux
$ cd my-linux

$ git clone --bare -l /home/proj/.git /pub/scm/proj.git

CONFIGURATION#

Everything below this line in this section is selectively included from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the same as what’s found there:

init.templateDir

init.defaultBranch

init.defaultObjectFormat

init.defaultRefFormat

clone.defaultRemoteName

clone.rejectShallow

clone.filterSubmodules

GIT#

Part of the git(1) suite