Git Reference---Getting and Creating Projects

NAME

git-init - Create an empty Git repository or reinitialize an existing one

SYNOPSIS

git init [-q | --quiet] [--bare] [--template=<template_directory>]
[--separate-git-dir <git dir>]
[--shared[=<permissions>]] [directory]

DESCRIPTION

This command creates an empty Git repository - basically a

.git

directory
with subdirectories for

objects

,

refs/heads

,

refs/tags

,
and template files. An initial

HEAD

file
that references the HEAD of the master branch is also created.

If the

$GIT_DIR

environment
variable is set then it specifies a path to use instead of

./.git

for
the base of the repository.

If the object storage directory is specified via the

$GIT_OBJECT_DIRECTORY

environment
variable then the sha1 directories are created underneath - otherwise the default

$GIT_DIR/objects

directory
is used.

Running git init in an existing repository is safe. It will not overwrite things that are
already there. The primary reason for rerunning git init is to pick up newly added templates
(or to move the repository to another place if --separate-git-dir is given).

OPTIONS

-q
--quiet

Only print error and warning messages; all other output will be suppressed.

--bare

Create a bare repository. If GIT_DIR environment is not set, it is set to the current working directory.

--template=<template_directory>

Specify the directory from which templates will be used. (See the "TEMPLATE DIRECTORY" section below.)

--separate-git-dir=<git dir>

Instead of initializing the repository as a directory to either

$GIT_DIR

or

./.git/

,
create a text file there containing the path to the actual repository. This file acts as filesystem-agnostic Git symbolic link to the repository.

If this is reinitialization, the repository will be moved to the specified path.

--shared[=(false|true|umask|group|all|world|everybody|0xxx)]

Specify that the Git repository is to be shared amongst several users. This allows users belonging to the same group to push into that repository. When specified, the config variable "core.sharedRepository" is set so that files and directories under

$GIT_DIR

are
created with the requested permissions. When not specified, Git will use permissions reported by umask(2).

The option can have the following values, defaulting to group if no value is given:

umask (or false)

Use permissions reported by umask(2). The default, when

--shared

is
not specified.

group (or true)

Make the repository group-writable, (and g+sx, since the git group may be not the primary group of all users). This is used to loosen the permissions of an otherwise safe umask(2) value. Note that the umask still applies to the other permission bits (e.g. if
umask is 0022, using group will
not remove read privileges from other (non-group) users). See 0xxx for how to exactly specify
the repository permissions.

all (or world or everybody)

Same as group, but make the repository readable by all users.

0xxx

0xxx is an octal number and each file will have mode 0xxx. 0xxx will
override users' umask(2) value (and not only loosen permissions as group and all does). 0640 will
create a repository which is group-readable, but not group-writable or accessible to others. 0660 will
create a repo that is readable and writable to the current user and group, but inaccessible to others.

By default, the configuration flag

receive.denyNonFastForwards

is
enabled in shared repositories, so that you cannot force a non fast-forwarding push into it.

If you provide a directory, the command is run inside it. If this directory does not exist,
it will be created.

TEMPLATE DIRECTORY

The template directory contains files and directories that will be copied to the

$GIT_DIR

after
it is created.

The template directory will be one of the following (in order):

the argument given with the

--template

option;

the contents of the

$GIT_TEMPLATE_DIR

environment
variable;

the

init.templateDir

configuration
variable; or

the default template directory:

/usr/share/git-core/templates

.

The default template directory includes some directory structure, suggested "exclude patterns" (seegitignore[5]),
and sample hook files (see githooks[5]).

EXAMPLES

Start a new Git repository for an existing code base

$ cd /path/to/my/codebase
$ git init      (1)
$ git add .     (2)
$ git commit    (3)

Create a /path/to/my/codebase/.git directory.

Add all existing files to the index.

Record the pristine state as the first commit in the history.

GIT

Part of the git[1] suite

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]
[--recursive | --recurse-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 -r

), 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

--local
-l

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.

--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.

--shared
-s

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
gc --auto

. (See git-gc[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

-l

option
in a repository cloned with

-s

will
copy objects from the source repository into a pack in the cloned repository, removing the disk space savings of

clone
-s

. It is safe, however, to run

git
gc

, which uses the

-l

option
by default.

If you want to break the dependency of a repository cloned with

-s

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 <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.

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.

--quiet
-q

Operate quietly. Progress is not reported to the standard error stream. This flag is also passed to the ‘rsync’ command when given.

--verbose
-v

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 -q is specified. This flag forces progress status even if the standard error stream is not directed to a terminal.

--no-checkout
-n

No checkout of HEAD is performed after the clone is complete.

--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

-n

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.

--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.

--origin <name>
-o <name>

Instead of using the remote name

origin

to
keep track of the upstream repository, use

<name>

.

--branch <name>
-b <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.

--upload-pack <upload-pack>
-u <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].)

--config <key>=<value>
-c <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.

--depth <depth>

Create a shallow clone with a history truncated to the specified number of revisions.

--[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. When creating a shallow clone with the

--depth

option,
this is the default, unless

--no-single-branch

is
given to fetch the histories near the tips of all branches. 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.

--recursive
--recurse-submodules

After the clone is created, initialize all submodules within, using their default settings. This is equivalent to running

git
submodule update --init --recursive

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)

--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.

<repository>

The (possibly remote) repository to clone from. See the 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.

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 and rsync can be used for fetching and pushing, but these are 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.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

git://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

http[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

ftp[s]://host.xz[:port]/path/to/repo.git/

rsync://host.xz/path/to/repo.git/

An alternative scp-like syntax may also be used with the ssh protocol:

[user@]host.xz:path/to/repo.git/

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.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

git://host.xz[:port]/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

[user@]host.xz:/~[user]/path/to/repo.git/

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.

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[1] 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

GIT

Part of the git[1] suite