Git Clone
In Git, cloning is the act of making a copy of any target repository. The target repository can be remote or local. You can clone your repository from the remote repository to create a local copy on your system. Also, you can sync between the two locations.
The git clone
command is used to create a local copy of a specific repository or branch within a repository.
Usually, the original repository is located on a remote server, often from a Git hosting service like Gitopia, GitHub, Bitbucket, or GitLab. The remote repository URL is referred to the origin.
Git Clone Syntax:
git clone <repository URL>
Git Clone Common Usage
git clone <url>
: Clone a repository that already exists on Gitopia, including all of the files, branches, and commits in the repository.Example:
git clone gitopia://gitopia147dgrtq5ywww473uz680fx2ucex9fv3qnw94zm/hello-world
git clone <url> "directory-name"
: Clone the repository into a specific directory without switching to that particular directory.Example:
git clone gitopia://gitopia147dgrtq5ywww473uz680fx2ucex9fv3qnw94zm/hello-world "git-projects"
git clone -b <branch-name> [url]
: Clone only a specific git branch from a repository.Example:
git clone -b master gitopia://gitopia147dgrtq5ywww473uz680fx2ucex9fv3qnw94zm/hello-world
git clone --mirror
: Clone a repository but without the ability to edit any of the files. This includes the refs, or branches. You may want to use this if you are trying to create a secondary copy of a repository on a separate remote and you want to match all of the branches. This may occur during configuration using a new remote for your Git hosting, or when using Git during automated testing.Example:
git clone --mirror gitopia://gitopia147dgrtq5ywww473uz680fx2ucex9fv3qnw94zm/hello-world
You can learn more about the
git clone
command and its options in git-scm's documentation.