What's the best practice to “git clone” into an existing folder?

Question

I have a working copy of the project, without any source control meta data. Now, I\'d like to do the equivalent of git-clone into this folder, and keep my local changes.

Answer 1

git clone your_repo tmp && mv tmp/.git . && rm -rf tmp && git reset --mixed

Answer 2

I'd git clone to a new directory and copy the content of the existing directory to the new clone.

Answer 3

Just use the . at the end of the git clone command (being in that directory), like this:

cd your_dir_to_clone_in/
git clone git@github.com/somerepo/ .

Answer 4

The following i did, to checkout master branch in an existing directory:

git init
git remote add origin [my-repo]
git fetch
git checkout origin/master -ft

Answer 5

If you are using at least git 1.7.7 (which taught clone the --config option), to turn the current directory into a working copy:

git clone example.com/my.git ./.git --mirror --config core.bare=false

This works by:

• Cloning the repository into a new .git folder
• --mirror makes the new clone into a purely metadata folder as .git needs to be
• --config core.bare=false countermands the implicit bare=true of the --mirror option, thereby allowing the repository to have an associated working directory and act like a normal clone

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This obviously won't work if a .git metadata directory already exists in the directory you wish to turn into a working copy.

Answer 6

Lots of answers already to do it the way that the OP asked. But it worth noting that doing it the opposite way around is far simpler:

git clone repo-url tmp/
cp -R working/ tmp/

You now have the desired target state - fresh clone + local-changes.