Git Pocket Guide

Chapter 6. Tracking Other Repositories

This chapter discusses copying or “cloning” an existing repository, and thereafter sharing changes between original and clone using the Git “push” and “pull” commands.

Cloning a Repository

The git clone command initializes a new repository with the contents of another one and sets up tracking branches in the new repository so that you can easily coordinate changes between the two with the push/pull mechanism. We call the first repository a “remote” (even if it is in fact on the same host), and by default, this remote is named origin; you can change this with the --origin (-o) option, or with git remote rename later on. You can view and manipulate remotes with git remote; a repository can have more than one remote with which it synchronizes different sets of branches.

After cloning the remote repository, Git checks out the remote HEAD branch (often master); you can have it check out a different branch with -b branch, or none at all with -n:

$ git clone http://nifty-software.org/foo.git
Cloning into 'foo'...
remote: Counting objects: 528, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (425/425), done.
remote: Total 528 (delta 100), reused 528 (delta 100)
Receiving objects: 100% (528/528), 1.31 MiB | 1.30 Mi…
Resolving deltas: 100% (100/100), done.

If you give a second argument, Git will create a directory with that name for the new repository (or use an existing directory, so long as it’s empty); otherwise, it derives the name from that of source repository ...