GIT-CLONE(1) Git Manual GIT-CLONE(1)
NAME
git-clone - Clone a repository into a new directory
SYNOPSIS
git clone [--template=<template-directory>]
[-l] [-s] [--no-hardlinks] [-q] [-n] [--bare] [--mirror]
[-o <name>] [-b <name>] [-u <upload-pack>] [--reference <repository>]
[--dissociate] [--separate-git-dir <git-dir>]
[--depth <depth>] [--[no-]single-branch] [--no-tags]
[--recurse-submodules[=<pathspec>]] [--[no-]shallow-submodules]
[--[no-]remote-submodules] [--jobs <n>] [--sparse] [--[no-]reject-shallow]
[--filter=<filter-spec>] [--also-filter-submodules]] [--] <repository>
[<directory>]
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
When the repository to clone from is on a local machine, this flag
bypasses the normal "Git aware" transport mechanism and clones the
repository by making a copy of HEAD and everything under objects and
refs directories. The files under .git/objects/ directory are
hardlinked to save space when possible.
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
Force the cloning process from a repository on a local filesystem to
copy the files under the .git/objects directory instead of using
hardlinks. This may be desirable if you are trying to make a back-up
of your repository.
-s, --shared
When the repository to clone is on the local machine, instead of
using hard links, automatically setup .git/objects/info/alternates
to share the objects with the source repository. The resulting
repository starts out without any object of its own.
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>
If the reference <repository> is on the local machine, automatically
setup .git/objects/info/alternates to obtain objects from the
reference <repository>. Using an already existing repository as an
alternate will require fewer objects to be copied from the
repository being cloned, reducing network and local storage costs.
When using the --reference-if-able, a non existing directory is
skipped with a warning instead of aborting the clone.
NOTE: see the NOTE for the --shared option, and also the
--dissociate option.
--dissociate
Borrow the objects from reference repositories specified with the
--reference options only to reduce network transfer, and stop
borrowing from them after a clone is made by making necessary local
copies of borrowed objects. This option can also be used when
cloning locally from a repository that already borrows objects from
another repository—the new repository will borrow objects from the
same repository, and this option can be used to stop the borrowing.
-q, --quiet
Operate quietly. Progress is not reported to the standard error
stream.
-v, --verbose
Run verbosely. Does not affect the reporting of progress status to
the standard error stream.
--progress
Progress status is reported on the standard error stream by default
when it is attached to a terminal, unless --quiet is specified. This
flag forces progress status even if the standard error stream is not
directed to a terminal.
--server-option=<option>
Transmit the given string to the server when communicating using
protocol version 2. The given string must not contain a NUL or LF
character. The server’s handling of server options, including
unknown ones, is server-specific. When multiple
--server-option=<option> are given, they are all sent to the other
side in the order listed on the command line.
-n, --no-checkout
No checkout of HEAD is performed after the clone is complete.
--[no-]reject-shallow
Fail if the source repository is a shallow repository. The
clone.rejectShallow configuration variable can be used to specify
the default.
--bare
Make a bare Git repository. That is, instead of creating <directory>
and placing the administrative files in <directory>/.git, make the
<directory> itself the $GIT_DIR. This obviously implies the
--no-checkout because there is nowhere to check out the working
tree. Also the branch heads at the remote are copied directly to
corresponding local branch heads, without mapping them to
refs/remotes/origin/. When this option is used, neither
remote-tracking branches nor the related configuration variables are
created.
--sparse
Employ a sparse-checkout, with only files in the toplevel directory
initially being present. The git-sparse-checkout(1) command can be
used to grow the working directory as needed.
--filter=<filter-spec>
Use the partial clone feature and request that the server sends a
subset of reachable objects according to a given object filter. When
using --filter, the supplied <filter-spec> is used for the partial
clone filter. For example, --filter=blob:none will filter out all
blobs (file contents) until needed by Git. Also,
--filter=blob:limit=<size> will filter out all blobs of size at
least <size>. For more details on filter specifications, see the
--filter option in git-rev-list(1).
--also-filter-submodules
Also apply the partial clone filter to any submodules in the
repository. Requires --filter and --recurse-submodules. This can be
turned on by default by setting the clone.filterSubmodules config
option.
--mirror
Set up a mirror of the source repository. This implies --bare.
Compared to --bare, --mirror not only maps local branches of the
source to local branches of the target, it maps all refs (including
remote-tracking branches, notes etc.) and sets up a refspec
configuration such that all these refs are overwritten by a git
remote update in the target repository.
-o <name>, --origin <name>
Instead of using the remote name origin to keep track of the
upstream repository, use <name>. Overrides clone.defaultRemoteName
from the config.
-b <name>, --branch <name>
Instead of pointing the newly created HEAD to the branch pointed to
by the cloned repository’s HEAD, point to <name> branch instead. In
a non-bare repository, this is the branch that will be checked out.
--branch can also take tags and detaches the HEAD at that commit in
the resulting repository.
-u <upload-pack>, --upload-pack <upload-pack>
When given, and the repository to clone from is accessed via ssh,
this specifies a non-default path for the command run on the other
end.
--template=<template-directory>
Specify the directory from which templates will be used; (See the
"TEMPLATE DIRECTORY" section of git-init(1).)
-c <key>=<value>, --config <key>=<value>
Set a configuration variable in the newly-created repository; this
takes effect immediately after the repository is initialized, but
before the remote history is fetched or any files checked out. The
<key> is in the same format as expected by git-config(1) (e.g.,
core.eol=true). If multiple values are given for the same key, each
value will be written to the config file. This makes it safe, for
example, to add additional fetch refspecs to the origin remote.
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>
Create a shallow clone with a history truncated to the specified
number of commits. Implies --single-branch unless --no-single-branch
is given to fetch the histories near the tips of all branches. If
you want to clone submodules shallowly, also pass
--shallow-submodules.
--shallow-since=<date>
Create a shallow clone with a history after the specified time.
--shallow-exclude=<revision>
Create a shallow clone with a history, excluding commits reachable
from a specified remote branch or tag. This option can be specified
multiple times.
--[no-]single-branch
Clone only the history leading to the tip of a single branch, either
specified by the --branch option or the primary branch remote’s HEAD
points at. Further fetches into the resulting repository will only
update the remote-tracking branch for the branch this option was
used for the initial cloning. If the HEAD at the remote did not
point at any branch when --single-branch clone was made, no
remote-tracking branch is created.
--no-tags
Don’t clone any tags, and set remote.<remote>.tagOpt=--no-tags in
the config, ensuring that future git pull and git fetch operations
won’t follow any tags. Subsequent explicit tag fetches will still
work, (see git-fetch(1)).
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>]
After the clone is created, initialize and clone submodules within
based on the provided <pathspec>. If no =<pathspec> is provided, all
submodules are initialized and cloned. This option can be given
multiple times for pathspecs consisting of multiple entries. The
resulting clone has submodule.active set to the provided pathspec,
or "." (meaning all submodules) if no pathspec is provided.
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
All submodules which are cloned will be shallow with a depth of 1.
--[no-]remote-submodules
All submodules which are cloned will use the status of the
submodule’s remote-tracking branch to update the submodule, rather
than the superproject’s recorded SHA-1. Equivalent to passing
--remote to git submodule update.
--separate-git-dir=<git-dir>
Instead of placing the cloned repository where it is supposed to be,
place the cloned repository at the specified directory, then make a
filesystem-agnostic Git symbolic link to there. The result is Git
repository can be separated from working tree.
--ref-format=<ref-format>
Specify the given ref storage format for the repository. The valid
values are:
• files for loose files with packed-refs. This is the default.
• reftable for the reftable format. This format is experimental
and its internals are subject to change.
-j <n>, --jobs <n>
The number of submodules fetched at the same time. Defaults to the
submodule.fetchJobs option.
<repository>
The (possibly remote) <repository> to clone from. See the GIT URLS
section below for more information on specifying repositories.
<directory>
The name of a new directory to clone into. The "humanish" part of
the source repository is used if no <directory> is explicitly given
(repo for /path/to/repo.git and foo for host.xz:foo/.git). Cloning
into an existing directory is only allowed if the directory is
empty.
--bundle-uri=<uri>
Before fetching from the remote, fetch a bundle from the given <uri>
and unbundle the data into the local repository. The refs in the
bundle will be stored under the hidden refs/bundle/* namespace. This
option is incompatible with --depth, --shallow-since, and
--shallow-exclude.
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:
• ssh://[<user>@]<host>[:<port>]/<path-to-git-repo>
• git://<host>[:<port>]/<path-to-git-repo>
• http[s]://<host>[:<port>]/<path-to-git-repo>
• ftp[s]://<host>[:<port>]/<path-to-git-repo>
An alternative scp-like syntax may also be used with the ssh protocol:
• [<user>@]<host>:/<path-to-git-repo>
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:
• ssh://[<user>@]<host>[:<port>]/~<user>/<path-to-git-repo>
• git://<host>[:<port>]/~<user>/<path-to-git-repo>
• [<user>@]<host>:~<user>/<path-to-git-repo>
For local repositories, also supported by Git natively, the following
syntaxes may be used:
• /path/to/repo.git/
• file:///path/to/repo.git/
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:
• <transport>::<address>
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:
[url "<actual-url-base>"]
insteadOf = <other-url-base>
For example, with this:
[url "git://git.host.xz/"]
insteadOf = host.xz:/path/to/
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:
[url "<actual-url-base>"]
pushInsteadOf = <other-url-base>
For example, with this:
[url "ssh://example.org/"]
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
• Clone from upstream:
$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/.../linux.git my-linux
$ cd my-linux
$ make
• Make a local clone that borrows from the current directory, without
checking things out:
$ git clone -l -s -n . ../copy
$ cd ../copy
$ git show-branch
• Clone from upstream while borrowing from an existing local
directory:
$ git clone --reference /git/linux.git \
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/.../linux.git \
my-linux
$ cd my-linux
• Create a bare repository to publish your changes to the public:
$ 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
Specify the directory from which templates will be copied. (See the
"TEMPLATE DIRECTORY" section of git-init(1).)
init.defaultBranch
Allows overriding the default branch name e.g. when initializing a
new repository.
init.defaultObjectFormat
Allows overriding the default object format for new repositories.
See --object-format= in git-init(1). Both the command line option
and the GIT_DEFAULT_HASH environment variable take precedence over
this config.
init.defaultRefFormat
Allows overriding the default ref storage format for new
repositories. See --ref-format= in git-init(1). Both the command
line option and the GIT_DEFAULT_REF_FORMAT environment variable take
precedence over this config.
clone.defaultRemoteName
The name of the remote to create when cloning a repository. Defaults
to origin. It can be overridden by passing the --origin command-line
option.
clone.rejectShallow
Reject cloning a repository if it is a shallow one; this can be
overridden by passing the --reject-shallow option on the command
line.
clone.filterSubmodules
If a partial clone filter is provided (see --filter in git-rev-
list(1)) and --recurse-submodules is used, also apply the filter to
submodules.
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
Git 2.47.3 07/30/2025 GIT-CLONE(1)
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