What does the Git clone command do?
Experience Level:
Junior
Tags:
Git
Source control
Answer
The git clone
command is used for creating a local repository from another repository.
It can be executed like this:
git clone <URL> <Folder>
- The URL can be either physical path to anoher local repository (folder), or HTTP, HTTPS or SSH URL to the remote reposiory.
- If you don't provide the <Folder> parameter, the repository will be created in a newly created folder that will be automatically derived from the <URL>
- If you want to clone the repository directly to the current folder (use
git clone <URL> .
), the current folder must be empty
When the git clone
is executed, it does the following steps for you:
- New empty folder is created in your current folder
- New empty .git folder is created in a newly created folder (this .git folder will contain all data of the target repository after the next step is completed)
- Data from the target repository .git folder is copied to your newly created .git folder
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