Cloning

Until now, each repository lived only on your computer. A team shares its work through a remote: another copy of the repository, usually on a server everyone can reach. In this course, that server is git.example.

git clone makes your own copy of a remote repository:

git clone https://git.example/team/recipes.git

It creates a folder named after the repository, recipes, and copies everything into it: every commit, every branch, the whole history. Then it checks out main, so the files are there to work on. Move into the folder with cd recipes before you run git commands there.

A clone is a complete repository. You can read its history, commit and make branches without the server. You only talk to the server again when you choose to: to send your commits (git push), or to get other people's (git fetch and git pull). The next two Lessons cover those.

Choosing the folder

Give git clone a second name to clone into a different folder:

git clone https://git.example/team/recipes.git cookbook

The name is a path, so ../cookbook works too: .. is the folder above the one you're in.

git won't clone into a folder that already has files in it. It stops with fatal: destination path 'recipes' already exists and is not an empty directory, and changes nothing. Pick another name. Or make an empty folder, cd into it, and run git clone <url> . to clone right there: . means "this folder".

origin

A clone remembers where it came from, under the name origin. git remote -v lists your remotes:

origin  https://git.example/team/recipes.git (fetch)
origin  https://git.example/team/recipes.git (push)

Each remote is listed twice, with the address git fetches from and the one it pushes to. They're almost always the same. When you need a repository's address, to clone it again or to tell a teammate, this is where to look.

Remote-tracking branches

git log --oneline --all in a fresh clone shows more names than main:

68ff54e (HEAD -> main, origin/main, origin/HEAD) Add a drinks list
4677213 Add the bread recipe
ad1deb4 Add the soup recipe

• main is your own branch. It moves when you commit.
• origin/main is a remote-tracking branch: your repository's note of where main was on origin the last time you talked to it. You don't commit on it. git moves it when you fetch, pull or push.
• origin/HEAD names the branch origin treats as its main one.

The Live Graph draws origin/main as a dashed label. When origin itself is shown, it gets a band of its own, with its own branches.

Your branch's upstream

A clone also makes origin/main the upstream of your main: the remote branch it's compared with, and the one it pushes to and pulls from by default. That's what git status reports:

On branch main
Your branch is up to date with 'origin/main'.

"Up to date" means up to date with what your repository last saw. git status doesn't ask the server. If a teammate pushes a minute after you clone, git status won't know until you fetch.