1GIT-CLONE(1) Git Manual GIT-CLONE(1)
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6 git-clone - Clone a repository into a new directory
7
9 git clone [--template=<template_directory>]
10 [-l] [-s] [--no-hardlinks] [-q] [-n] [--bare] [--mirror]
11 [-o <name>] [-b <name>] [-u <upload-pack>] [--reference <repository>]
12 [--dissociate] [--separate-git-dir <git dir>]
13 [--depth <depth>] [--[no-]single-branch] [--no-tags]
14 [--recurse-submodules[=<pathspec>]] [--[no-]shallow-submodules]
15 [--[no-]remote-submodules] [--jobs <n>] [--] <repository>
16 [<directory>]
17
20 Clones a repository into a newly created directory, creates
21 remote-tracking branches for each branch in the cloned repository
22 (visible using git branch --remotes), and creates and checks out an
23 initial branch that is forked from the cloned repository’s currently
24 active branch.
25 After the clone, a plain git fetch without arguments will update all
27 the remote-tracking branches, and a git pull without arguments will in
28 addition merge the remote master branch into the current master branch,
29 if any (this is untrue when "--single-branch" is given; see below).
30 This default configuration is achieved by creating references to the
32 remote branch heads under refs/remotes/origin and by initializing
33 remote.origin.url and remote.origin.fetch configuration variables.
34
36 -l, --local
37 When the repository to clone from is on a local machine, this flag
38 bypasses the normal "Git aware" transport mechanism and clones the
39 repository by making a copy of HEAD and everything under objects
40 and refs directories. The files under .git/objects/ directory are
41 hardlinked to save space when possible.
42 If the repository is specified as a local path (e.g.,
44 /path/to/repo), this is the default, and --local is essentially a
45 no-op. If the repository is specified as a URL, then this flag is
46 ignored (and we never use the local optimizations). Specifying
47 --no-local will override the default when /path/to/repo is given,
48 using the regular Git transport instead.
49 --no-hardlinks
51 Force the cloning process from a repository on a local filesystem
52 to copy the files under the .git/objects directory instead of using
53 hardlinks. This may be desirable if you are trying to make a
54 back-up of your repository.
55 -s, --shared
57 When the repository to clone is on the local machine, instead of
58 using hard links, automatically setup .git/objects/info/alternates
59 to share the objects with the source repository. The resulting
60 repository starts out without any object of its own.
61 NOTE: this is a possibly dangerous operation; do not use it unless
63 you understand what it does. If you clone your repository using
64 this option and then delete branches (or use any other Git command
65 that makes any existing commit unreferenced) in the source
66 repository, some objects may become unreferenced (or dangling).
67 These objects may be removed by normal Git operations (such as git
68 commit) which automatically call git gc --auto. (See git-gc(1).) If
69 these objects are removed and were referenced by the cloned
70 repository, then the cloned repository will become corrupt.
71 Note that running git repack without the --local option in a
73 repository cloned with --shared will copy objects from the source
74 repository into a pack in the cloned repository, removing the disk
75 space savings of clone --shared. It is safe, however, to run git
76 gc, which uses the --local option by default.
77 If you want to break the dependency of a repository cloned with
79 --shared on its source repository, you can simply run git repack -a
80 to copy all objects from the source repository into a pack in the
81 cloned repository.
82 --reference[-if-able] <repository>
84 If the reference repository is on the local machine, automatically
85 setup .git/objects/info/alternates to obtain objects from the
86 reference repository. Using an already existing repository as an
87 alternate will require fewer objects to be copied from the
88 repository being cloned, reducing network and local storage costs.
89 When using the --reference-if-able, a non existing directory is
90 skipped with a warning instead of aborting the clone.
91 NOTE: see the NOTE for the --shared option, and also the
93 --dissociate option.
94 --dissociate
96 Borrow the objects from reference repositories specified with the
97 --reference options only to reduce network transfer, and stop
98 borrowing from them after a clone is made by making necessary local
99 copies of borrowed objects. This option can also be used when
100 cloning locally from a repository that already borrows objects from
101 another repository—the new repository will borrow objects from the
102 same repository, and this option can be used to stop the borrowing.
103 -q, --quiet
105 Operate quietly. Progress is not reported to the standard error
106 stream.
107 -v, --verbose
109 Run verbosely. Does not affect the reporting of progress status to
110 the standard error stream.
111 --progress
113 Progress status is reported on the standard error stream by default
114 when it is attached to a terminal, unless --quiet is specified.
115 This flag forces progress status even if the standard error stream
116 is not directed to a terminal.
117 --server-option=<option>
119 Transmit the given string to the server when communicating using
120 protocol version 2. The given string must not contain a NUL or LF
121 character. The server’s handling of server options, including
122 unknown ones, is server-specific. When multiple
123 --server-option=<option> are given, they are all sent to the other
124 side in the order listed on the command line.
125 -n, --no-checkout
127 No checkout of HEAD is performed after the clone is complete.
128 --bare
130 Make a bare Git repository. That is, instead of creating
131 <directory> and placing the administrative files in
132 <directory>/.git, make the <directory> itself the $GIT_DIR. This
133 obviously implies the --no-checkout because there is nowhere to
134 check out the working tree. Also the branch heads at the remote are
135 copied directly to corresponding local branch heads, without
136 mapping them to refs/remotes/origin/. When this option is used,
137 neither remote-tracking branches nor the related configuration
138 variables are created.
139 --mirror
141 Set up a mirror of the source repository. This implies --bare.
142 Compared to --bare, --mirror not only maps local branches of the
143 source to local branches of the target, it maps all refs (including
144 remote-tracking branches, notes etc.) and sets up a refspec
145 configuration such that all these refs are overwritten by a git
146 remote update in the target repository.
147 -o <name>, --origin <name>
149 Instead of using the remote name origin to keep track of the
150 upstream repository, use <name>.
151 -b <name>, --branch <name>
153 Instead of pointing the newly created HEAD to the branch pointed to
154 by the cloned repository’s HEAD, point to <name> branch instead. In
155 a non-bare repository, this is the branch that will be checked out.
156 --branch can also take tags and detaches the HEAD at that commit in
157 the resulting repository.
158 -u <upload-pack>, --upload-pack <upload-pack>
160 When given, and the repository to clone from is accessed via ssh,
161 this specifies a non-default path for the command run on the other
162 end.
163 --template=<template_directory>
165 Specify the directory from which templates will be used; (See the
166 "TEMPLATE DIRECTORY" section of git-init(1).)
167 -c <key>=<value>, --config <key>=<value>
169 Set a configuration variable in the newly-created repository; this
170 takes effect immediately after the repository is initialized, but
171 before the remote history is fetched or any files checked out. The
172 key is in the same format as expected by git-config(1) (e.g.,
173 core.eol=true). If multiple values are given for the same key, each
174 value will be written to the config file. This makes it safe, for
175 example, to add additional fetch refspecs to the origin remote.
176 Due to limitations of the current implementation, some
178 configuration variables do not take effect until after the initial
179 fetch and checkout. Configuration variables known to not take
180 effect are: remote.<name>.mirror and remote.<name>.tagOpt. Use the
181 corresponding --mirror and --no-tags options instead.
182 --depth <depth>
184 Create a shallow clone with a history truncated to the specified
185 number of commits. Implies --single-branch unless
186 --no-single-branch is given to fetch the histories near the tips of
187 all branches. If you want to clone submodules shallowly, also pass
188 --shallow-submodules.
189 --shallow-since=<date>
191 Create a shallow clone with a history after the specified time.
192 --shallow-exclude=<revision>
194 Create a shallow clone with a history, excluding commits reachable
195 from a specified remote branch or tag. This option can be specified
196 multiple times.
197 --[no-]single-branch
199 Clone only the history leading to the tip of a single branch,
200 either specified by the --branch option or the primary branch
201 remote’s HEAD points at. Further fetches into the resulting
202 repository will only update the remote-tracking branch for the
203 branch this option was used for the initial cloning. If the HEAD at
204 the remote did not point at any branch when --single-branch clone
205 was made, no remote-tracking branch is created.
206 --no-tags
208 Don’t clone any tags, and set remote.<remote>.tagOpt=--no-tags in
209 the config, ensuring that future git pull and git fetch operations
210 won’t follow any tags. Subsequent explicit tag fetches will still
211 work, (see git-fetch(1)).
212 Can be used in conjunction with --single-branch to clone and
214 maintain a branch with no references other than a single cloned
215 branch. This is useful e.g. to maintain minimal clones of the
216 default branch of some repository for search indexing.
217 --recurse-submodules[=<pathspec]
219 After the clone is created, initialize and clone submodules within
220 based on the provided pathspec. If no pathspec is provided, all
221 submodules are initialized and cloned. This option can be given
222 multiple times for pathspecs consisting of multiple entries. The
223 resulting clone has submodule.active set to the provided pathspec,
224 or "." (meaning all submodules) if no pathspec is provided.
225 Submodules are initialized and cloned using their default settings.
227 This is equivalent to running git submodule update --init
228 --recursive <pathspec> immediately after the clone is finished.
229 This option is ignored if the cloned repository does not have a
230 worktree/checkout (i.e. if any of --no-checkout/-n, --bare, or
231 --mirror is given)
232 --[no-]shallow-submodules
234 All submodules which are cloned will be shallow with a depth of 1.
235 --[no-]remote-submodules
237 All submodules which are cloned will use the status of the
238 submodule’s remote-tracking branch to update the submodule, rather
239 than the superproject’s recorded SHA-1. Equivalent to passing
240 --remote to git submodule update.
241 --separate-git-dir=<git dir>
243 Instead of placing the cloned repository where it is supposed to
244 be, place the cloned repository at the specified directory, then
245 make a filesystem-agnostic Git symbolic link to there. The result
246 is Git repository can be separated from working tree.
247 -j <n>, --jobs <n>
249 The number of submodules fetched at the same time. Defaults to the
250 submodule.fetchJobs option.
251 <repository>
253 The (possibly remote) repository to clone from. See the GIT URLS
254 section below for more information on specifying repositories.
255 <directory>
257 The name of a new directory to clone into. The "humanish" part of
258 the source repository is used if no directory is explicitly given
259 (repo for /path/to/repo.git and foo for host.xz:foo/.git). Cloning
260 into an existing directory is only allowed if the directory is
261 empty.
262
264 In general, URLs contain information about the transport protocol, the
265 address of the remote server, and the path to the repository. Depending
266 on the transport protocol, some of this information may be absent.
267 Git supports ssh, git, http, and https protocols (in addition, ftp, and
269 ftps can be used for fetching, but this is inefficient and deprecated;
270 do not use it).
271 The native transport (i.e. git:// URL) does no authentication and
273 should be used with caution on unsecured networks.
274 The following syntaxes may be used with them:
276 · ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/
278 · git://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/
280 · http[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/
282 · ftp[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/
284 An alternative scp-like syntax may also be used with the ssh protocol:
286 · [user@]host.xz:path/to/repo.git/
288 This syntax is only recognized if there are no slashes before the first
290 colon. This helps differentiate a local path that contains a colon. For
291 example the local path foo:bar could be specified as an absolute path
292 or ./foo:bar to avoid being misinterpreted as an ssh url.
293 The ssh and git protocols additionally support ~username expansion:
295 · ssh://[user@]host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/
297 · git://host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/
299 · [user@]host.xz:/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/
301 For local repositories, also supported by Git natively, the following
303 syntaxes may be used:
304 · /path/to/repo.git/
306 · file:///path/to/repo.git/
308 These two syntaxes are mostly equivalent, except the former implies
310 --local option.
311 When Git doesn’t know how to handle a certain transport protocol, it
313 attempts to use the remote-<transport> remote helper, if one exists. To
314 explicitly request a remote helper, the following syntax may be used:
315 · <transport>::<address>
317 where <address> may be a path, a server and path, or an arbitrary
319 URL-like string recognized by the specific remote helper being invoked.
320 See gitremote-helpers(7) for details.
321 If there are a large number of similarly-named remote repositories and
323 you want to use a different format for them (such that the URLs you use
324 will be rewritten into URLs that work), you can create a configuration
325 section of the form:
326 [url "<actual url base>"]
328 insteadOf = <other url base>
329 For example, with this:
332 [url "git://git.host.xz/"]
334 insteadOf = host.xz:/path/to/
335 insteadOf = work:
336 a URL like "work:repo.git" or like "host.xz:/path/to/repo.git" will be
339 rewritten in any context that takes a URL to be
340 "git://git.host.xz/repo.git".
341 If you want to rewrite URLs for push only, you can create a
343 configuration section of the form:
344 [url "<actual url base>"]
346 pushInsteadOf = <other url base>
347 For example, with this:
350 [url "ssh://example.org/"]
352 pushInsteadOf = git://example.org/
353 a URL like "git://example.org/path/to/repo.git" will be rewritten to
356 "ssh://example.org/path/to/repo.git" for pushes, but pulls will still
357 use the original URL.
358
360 · Clone from upstream:
361 $ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/.../linux.git my-linux
363 $ cd my-linux
364 $ make
365 · Make a local clone that borrows from the current directory, without
368 checking things out:
369 $ git clone -l -s -n . ../copy
371 $ cd ../copy
372 $ git show-branch
373 · Clone from upstream while borrowing from an existing local
376 directory:
377 $ git clone --reference /git/linux.git \
379 git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/.../linux.git \
380 my-linux
381 $ cd my-linux
382 · Create a bare repository to publish your changes to the public:
385 $ git clone --bare -l /home/proj/.git /pub/scm/proj.git
387
390 Part of the git(1) suite
391Git 2.24.1 12/10/2019 GIT-CLONE(1)