Git Best Practices Guide

Cloning an existent repository

With Git, it is possible to clone an existent repository to work on it.

There are several possibilities to clone a repository, but the http, git, and ssh protocols are used the most.

If the repository is public, it will create a folder and everything inside the folder. However, if the repository is private or protected, you have to enter an access information or provide a private ssh key. For example, if you want to clone a Symfony2 repository, type this line to clone it using myProjectName as the folder name:

Erik@local:~/myProject$ git clone https://github.com/symfony/symfony.gitmyProjectName
Initialized empty Git repository in /var/www/myProjectName/.git/
remote: Counting objects: 7820, done.
remote: Compressing ...