Add or Clone a Remote Branch into a New Local Folder

Learn various methods to add remote branches or clone remote repositories into a local repository.

Suppose we have a new team member. The new member wants a copy of the current Git repository. We can achieve that with git clone.

Git clone

The git clone command can be used to clone the entire codebase of a project from any remote repository and set it up as a local repository.

One way to set up a remote repository is to create a local repository directly from a remote one. This is known as git cloning.

 $ git clone <remote path> <folder name of local repository>

By default, git clone clones the remote repository into a new directory with the same name, under the current folder.

The git clone command expects to create that folder. So, the operation aborts when the local directory exists. It prevents the git clone command from overriding existing files and data.

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