Git Clone Just the files please

Question

I want to clone a GIT repo and NOT end up with a  git directory  In other words I just want the files  Is there a way to do this    git clone --no-checkout did the exact opposite of what I want  gave me just the  git directory    I am trying to do that for a remote repo  not a local one  meaning this is not a duplicate of  How to do a    git export     like    svn export       even though the solution might end up being the same

User · Answer

git archive --format tar --remote  lt repository URL gt  HEAD   tar xf -   taken from here

User · Answer

It sounds like you just want a copy of the source code   If so why not just copy the directory and exclude the  git directory from the copy

User · Answer

git --work-tree  tmp files without dot git clone --depth 1     https   git yourgit your com myawesomerepo git      tmp deleteme contents of dot git  Both the directories in  tmp are created on the fly  No need to pre-create these

User · Answer

you can create a shallow clone to only get the last few revisions    git clone --depth 1 git   url   then either simply delete the  git directory or use git archive to export your tree

User · Answer

No need to use git at all  just append  quot  zipball master  quot  to URL  source   Downloading This solution is the closest to  quot Download ZIP quot  button on github page  One advantage is lack of  git directory  The other one - it downloads single ZIP file instead of each file one by one  and this can make huge difference  It can be done from command line by wget  wget -O  quot   basename  REPO URL  quot  zip  quot  REPO URL quot  zipball master   The only problem is  that some repositories might not have master branch at all  If this is the case   quot master quot  in URL should be replaced by appropriate branch  Unzipping Once the ZIP is there  the final unzipped directory name may still be pretty weird and unexpected  To fix this  name can be extracted by this script  and mv-ed to  basename of the URL  Final script sh could look something like  evals for dealing with spaces    Script for downloading from github  If no BRANCH NAME is given  default is  quot master quot    usage  script sh URL  BRANCH NAME    repo name    basename  quot  1 quot     repo name    quot   eval    repo name    quot    branch    quot   2 -master  quot   downloading if     -e    quot    repo name   quot  quot  zip quot      then wget -O  quot    repo name   quot  quot  zip quot   quot  1 quot  quot  zipball    branch    quot  fi  unpacking and renaming if     -e    quot    repo name   quot      then unzip  quot    repo name   quot  quot  zip quot   amp  amp     dir name    quot   unzip -qql    repo name   zip   sed -r  1  s             3  s    q    quot   amp  amp  rm  quot    repo name   quot  quot  zip quot   amp  amp  mv  quot    dir name   quot   quot    repo name   quot  fi  Maintaining This approach shoud do the work for  quot just the files quot   and it is great for quick single-use access to small repositories  However  If the source is rather big  and the only possibility to update is to download and rebuild all  then  to the best of my knowledge  there is no possibility to update  git-less directory  so the full repo has to be downloaded again  Then the best solution is - as VonC has already explained - to stick with shallow copy git clone --depth 1  REPO URL  But what next  To  quot check for updates quot  see link  and to update see great wiki-like answer

User · Answer

git checkout -f There s another way to do this by splitting the repo from the working tree  This method is useful if you need to update these git-less git files on a regular basis  For instance  I use it when I need to check out source files and build an artifact  then copy the artifact into a different repo just for deployment to a server  and I also use it when pushing source code to a server when I want the source code to checkout and build into the www directory  We ll make two folders  one for the git one for the working files  mkdir workingfiles mkdir barerepo git  initialize a bare git repo  cd barerepo git git --bare init   Then create a post-receive hook  touch hooks post-receive chmod ug x hooks post-receive  Edit post-receive in your favorite editor  GIT WORK TREE  path to workingfiles git checkout -f   optional stuff  cd down to some directory  do some stuff   Add this as a remote  git remote add myserver ssh   user host  path to barerepo git  Now every time you push to this bare repo it will checkout the working tree to  workingfiles   But  workingfiles  itself is not under version control  running git status in  workingfiles  will give the error fatal  Not a git repository  or any parent up to mount point  data   It s just plain files  Unlike other solutions rm -r  git command is not needed  so if  workingfiles  is some other git repo you don t have to worry about the command used removing the other repo s git files

User · Answer

The git command that would be the closest from what you are looking for would by git archive  See backing up project which uses git  it will include in an archive all files  including submodules if you are using the git-archive-all script   You can then use that archive anywhere  giving you back only files  no  git directory   git archive --remote  lt repository URL gt    tar -t   If you need folders and files just from the first level   git archive --remote  lt repository URL gt    tar -t --exclude         To list only first-level folders of a remote repo   git archive --remote  lt repository URL gt    tar -t --exclude         grep       Note  that does not work for GitHub  not supported   So you would need to clone  shallow to quicken the clone step   and then  archive locally   git clone --depth 1 git github com xxx yyy git cd yyy git archive --format tar aTag -o aTag tar     Another option would be to do a shallow clone  as mentioned below   but locating the  git folder elsewhere   git --git-dir  path to another folder git clone --depth 1  url to repo   The repo folder would include only the file  without  git   Note  git --git-dir  is an option of the command git  not git clone     Update with Git 2 14 X 2 15  Q4 2017   it will make sure to avoid adding empty folders       git archive   especially when used with pathspec  stored an empty   directory in its output  even though Git itself never does so    This has been fixed    See commit 4318094  12 Sep 2017  by Ren   Scharfe       Suggested-by  Jeff King  peff    Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 62b1cb7  25 Sep 2017        archive  don t add empty directories to archives      While git doesn t track empty directories  git archive can be tricked into putting some into archives    While that is supported by the object database  it can t be represented in the index and thus it s unlikely to occur in the wild       As empty directories are not supported by git  they should also not be   written into archives    If an empty directory is really needed then it can be tracked and archived by placing an empty  gitignore file in it

User · Answer

Why not perform a clone and then delete the  git directory so that you just have a bare working copy   Edit  Or in fact why use clone at all  It s a bit confusing when you say that you want a git repo but without a  git directory  If you mean that you just want a copy of some state of the tree then why not do cp -R in the shell instead of the git clone and then delete the  git afterwards

[git] Git Clone: Just the files, please?

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