Clone

In Git, cloning means copying an existing remote repository to the current directory.

Many common Git commands are performed only on a local repository, that is, a repository that exists on a local machine. Here’s a command that will interact with a remote repository — a repository on a server that can be accessed through the internet.

Syntax

The syntax for cloning in Git via HTTPS is this:

git clone https://github.com/repository/URL.git

Example

In the example below, git clone is used to clone the Codecademy Docs repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/Codecademy/docs.git

  Cloning into 'docs'...
  remote: Enumerating objects: 21512, done.
  remote: Counting objects: 100% (3517/3517), done.
  remote: Compressing objects: 100% (1795/1795), done.
  remote: Total 21512 (delta 2233), reused 1727 (delta 1466), pack-reused 17995
  Receiving objects: 100% (21512/21512), 3.48 MiB | 9.56 MiB/s, done.
  Resolving deltas: 100% (10600/10600), done.