Can we reclone a git repository from the existing local repository

git git-clone git-revert
Priyank picture Priyank · Mar 10, 2014 · Viewed 38k times · Source

Since git is a distributed VCS, it should have complete history of changes done to a repository.

So can we extract that version of repo which was cloned first?

Actually I have done a lot of changes in my existing local repo. and do not want to revert back to the original state by losing the data. But I want to extract the original repository(which I cloned initially) to some other location using existing git objects(blob/tree).

Note : I don't have the access to git server now.

Answer

John Zwinck picture John Zwinck · Mar 10, 2014

Try this:

git clone SOURCE_PATH NEW_PATH # clones everything you have committed up to now
cd NEW_PATH                    # go to new clone, don't modify the pre-existing one
git reset --hard REV           # REV is the revision to "rewind" to (from git log)

So you need to figure out explicitly which revision to go back to (Git probably doesn't know which revision you originally cloned, but probably you can figure it out). The first step is just to clone from your local disk to your local disk in a different directory so you can keep your existing work untouched.

Related questions

How do I clone a specific Git branch?

Git clone will behave copying remote current working branch into local. Is there any way to clone a specific branch by myself without switching branches on the remote repository?

Read More
How do you clone a Git repository into a specific folder?

Executing the command git clone [email protected]:whatever creates a directory in my current folder named whatever, and drops the contents of the Git repository into that folder: /httpdocs/whatever/public My problem is that I need the contents …

Read More
Download a specific tag with Git

I'm trying to figure out how I can download a particular tag of a Git repository - it's one version behind the current version. I saw there was a tag for the previous version on the git web page, with …

Read More