Git clone without .git directory
GitVersion ControlGit CloneGit Problem Overview
Is there a flag to pass to git
when doing a clone, say don't clone the .git
directory? If not, how about a flag to delete the .git
directory after the clone?
Git Solutions
Solution 1 - Git
Use
git clone --depth=1 --branch=master git://someserver/somerepo dirformynewrepo
rm -rf ./dirformynewrepo/.git
- The depth option will make sure to copy the least bit of history possible to get that repo.
- The branch option is optional and if not specified would get the default branch.
- The second line will make your directory
dirformynewrepo
not a Git repository any more. - If you're doing recursive submodule clone, the depth and branch parameter don't apply to the submodules.
Solution 2 - Git
since you only want the files, you don't need to treat it as a git repo.
rsync -rlp --exclude '.git' user@host:path/to/git/repo/ .
and this only works with local path and remote ssh/rsync path, it may not work if the remote server only provides git:// or https:// access.
Solution 3 - Git
Alternatively, if you have Node.js installed, you can use the following command:
npx degit GIT_REPO
npx
comes with Node, and it allows you to run binary node-based packages without installing them first (alternatively, you can first install degit
globally using npm i -g degit
).
Degit is a tool created by Rich Harris, the creator of Svelte and Rollup, which he uses to quickly create a new project by cloning a repository without keeping the git folder. But it can also be used to clone any repo once...
Solution 4 - Git
For those who doubt the --depth 1
solution because it still download the .git
directory and you need to manually remove it afterward, maybe you need to know how git clone actually works.
When you normally clone a repo, git download all your files (spanning across commits) into the .git
directory. When you clone with --depth 1
, git only downloads the latest version of the files into .git
. After that, git will checkout
or retrieve those files from .git
into the working directory (no more download).
And oftentimes, because the file objects inside .git
is compressed, you will save more bandwidth by downloading the files with git clone --depth 1
rather than downloading the uncompressed files. And for some people with slow internet, that is worth the price (the need to run rm -rf
).
I personally think the git archive
solution is better but since it's not supported by GitHub, --depth 1
is the way to go.
Solution 5 - Git
git clone --separate-git-dir=$(mktemp -u) --depth=1 <repo> <dir> && rm <dir>/.git
I like this solution more because I don't like rm -rf
ing things automatically. It just rm
s a .git file, which means it could never accidentally rm -rf
a wrong .git directory
It has a dependency on mktemp
command so it'll work *nix systems (from what I see this needs further work for the mktemp
to work on MacOS, so if anyone wants to comment a working solution I'll add it)
In zsh, I made that a function so I ensure a dir
value is defined:
alias np='node-project'
function node-project() {
dir=${1:-.}
git clone --separate-git-dir=$(mktemp -u) --depth=1 <my-node-repo> $dir && rm $dir/.git
}
Explanation
The --separate-git-dir
flag lets you specify a path for the .git directory. The resulting "project" will have a .git file (not a directory) whose content will be a single line:
gitdir: <the dir you specified in the flag>
Because we used a tmp dir with the mktemp
command, the actual .git
directory contents will end up in a tmp dir. We also use a --depth=1
so it takes less space on tmp dirs.
Solution 6 - Git
git archive --remote
already implements this.
Solution 7 - Git
You can always do
git clone git://repo.org/fossproject.git && rm -rf fossproject/.git