git clone

git clone <url> [dir] does four things in one shot:

1. git init in the target directory (defaults to the repo name).
2. Adds a remote named origin with the clone URL.
3. git fetch origin downloads all objects and refs.
4. Checks out the default branch (usually main, sometimes master).

After that you have a full working repository: git log, git status, git switch. The entire project history is there, transparent to you.

URL formats

git clone https://github.com/foo/bar.git           # HTTPS

git clone git@github.com:foo/bar.git               # SSH

git clone ssh://user@host/path/to/repo.git         # SSH with port

git clone /path/to/local/repo                       # local

HTTPS requires a login or token on push (or a credential helper to cache it). SSH requires ssh-keys-git but never prompts for a password after setup. Many teams use SSH for exactly that reason.

Useful flags

git clone --depth 1 <url>          # shallow: last commit only

git clone --branch dev <url>       # check out branch dev instead of main

git clone --filter=blob:none <url> # partial: skip blob objects until checkout

git clone --bare <url>             # no working tree, just .git

git clone --recursive <url>        # include submodules (see chapter 13)

--depth 1 saves bandwidth and disk space on large repositories. The cost: you lose old history (git log goes back only to the shallow boundary). Modern Git allows pushing from a shallow clone, but operations that depend on the full history (merging old branches, bisecting far back) will stumble. Suitable for CI where you only need the current state.

What does not clone

• The .git/config of the source (a fresh one is created on the clone).
• Local branches in the source that were never pushed to that URL.
• Hooks from .git/hooks/ (they are local to each clone).
• The stash of the source.

What does clone: all commits, all branches, all tags (by default), the full history.

Pitfalls

• Cloning over HTTPS without a credential helper will ask for a password on every push. Fix: git config --global credential.helper (macOS: osxkeychain, Linux: cache, Windows: manager-core).
• The default remote name is origin. You can set a different one immediately with git clone -o upstream <url>, or rename it later: git remote rename origin upstream.
• git clone fetches the entire history, which can be gigabytes. For very large repositories, look at --filter=blob:none (partial clone) or --depth (shallow clone).