I'm doing:
git clone ssh://[email protected]/home/user/private/repos/project_hub.git ./
I'm getting:
Fatal: destination path '.' already exists and is not an empty directory.
I know path . already exists. And I can assure that directory IS empty. (I do ls inside and I see nothing!)
What am I missing here in order to clone that project into the current directory ?
simply put a dot next to it
git clone [email protected]:user/my-project.git .
From git help clone:
Cloning into an existing directory is only allowed if the directory is empty.
So make sure the directory is empty (check with ls -a), otherwise the command will fail.
I had this same need. In my case I had a standard web folder which is created by a web server install. For the purposes of this illustration let's say this is
/server/webroot
and webroot contains other standard files and folders. My repo just has the site specific files (html, javascript, CFML, etc.)
All I had to do was:
cd /server/webroot
git init
git pull [url to my repo.git]
You need to be careful to do the git init in the target folder because if you do NOT one of two things will happen:
fatal: Not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git
This did NOT disturb any of the "standard" files I have in my webroot folder but I did need to add them to the .gitignore file to prevent the inadvertent addition of them to subsequent commits.
This seems like an easy way to "clone" into a non-empty directory. If you don't want the .git and .gitignore files created by the pull, just delete them after the pull.
shopt -s dotglob
git clone ssh://[email protected]/home/user/private/repos/project_hub.git tmp && mv tmp/* . && rm -rf tmp
git clone your-repo tmp && mv tmp/.git . && rm -rf tmp && git reset --hard
Hmm... specifing the absolute current path using $(pwd) worked for me.
git clone https://github.com/me/myproject.git $(pwd)
git version: 2.21.0
I see this:
fatal: destination path 'CouchPotatoServer' already exists and is not an empty directory.
Amongst my searchings, I stumbled on to:
https://couchpota.to/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3943
Look for the entry by Clinton.Hall...
If you try this (as I did), you will probably get the access denied response, there was my 1st clue, so the initial error (for me), was actually eluding to the wrong root issue.
Solution for this in windows:
make sure you run cmd or git elevated, then run:
git clone https://github.com/RuudBurger/CouchPotatoServer.git
The above was my issue and simply elevating worked for me.
@Andrew has answered it clearly here. But as simple as this also works even if the directory is not empty:
git init .
git remote add origin <repository-url>
git pull origin master
I used this to clone a repo to the current directory, which wasn't empty. Not necessarily clean living, but it was in a disposable docker container:
git clone https://github.com/myself/myRepo.git temp
cp -r temp/* .
rm -rf temp
Here, I used cp -r instead of mv, since that copies hidden files and directories. Then dispose of the temporary directory with rm -rf
git clone ssh://[email protected]/home/user/private/repos/project_hub.git $(pwd)
If the current directory is empty, then this will work:
git clone <repository> foo; mv foo/* foo/.git* .; rmdir foo
use .(dot) at the end of your command like below
git clone URL .
The following is probably not fully equivalent to a clone in all cases but did the trick for me:
git init .
git remote add -t \* -f origin <repository-url>
git checkout master
In my case, this produces a .git/config file which is equivalent to the one I get when doing a clone.
it's useful to create a new file by mkdir filename,then running the command of git clone xxxxx,it does work in my computer
To be sure that you could clone the repo, go to any temporary directory and clone the project there:
git clone ssh://[email protected]/home/user/private/repos/project_hub.git
This will clone your stuff into a project_hub directory.
Once the cloning has finished, you could move this directory wherever you want:
mv project_hub /path/to/new/location
This is safe and doesn't require any magical stuff around.
Improving on @GoZoner's answer:
git clone <repository> foo; shopt -s dotglob nullglob; mv foo/* .; rmdir foo
The shopt command is taken from this SO answer and changes the behavior of the 'mv' command on Bash to include dotfiles, which you'll need to include the .git directory and any other hidden files.
Also note that this is only guaranteed to work as-is if the current directory (.) is empty, but it will work as long as none of the files in the cloned repo have the same name as files in the current directory. If you don't care what's in the current directory, you can add the -f (force) option to the 'mv' command.
So I fixed this same error by deleting the hidden .git folder in my root directory, and then adding a period to the 'git clone repo .' in my root/dist folder. This is in the context of a vue-cli webpack project. So what everyone else is saying is right, it usually means you have git tracking either in the folder you are trying to clone into or in the parent folder or root of the folder in question!
Removing with
rm -rf .*
may get you into trouble or some more errors.
If you have /path/to/folder, and would like to remove everything inside, but not that folder, just run:
rm -rf /path/to/folder/*
In addition to @StephaneDelcroix's answer, before using:
git clone [email protected]/my-project.git .
make sure that your current dir is empty by using
ls -a
Further improving on @phatblat's answer:
git clone --no-checkout <repository> tmp \
&& mv tmp/.git . \
&& rmdir tmp \
&& git checkout master
as one liner:
git clone --no-checkout <repository> tmp && mv tmp/.git . && rmdir tmp && git checkout master
The solution for Windows is to clone the repository to other folder and then copy and paste to the original location or just copy the .git invisible folder.
Source: Stackoverflow.com