How do I clone into a non-empty directory?

Question

I have directory A with files matching directory B. Directory A may have other needed files. Directory B is a git repo.

I want to clone directory B to directory A bu

Answer 1

Another simple recipe seems to work well for me:

git clone --bare $URL .git
git config core.bare false

My main use case for checking out to a directory with existing files is to control my Unix dotfiles with Git. On a new account, the home directory will already have some files in it, possibly even the ones I want to get from Git.