What is the difference between git clone and checkout?

git command
Praveen Sripati picture Praveen Sripati · Sep 4, 2011 · Viewed 315k times · Source

What is the difference between git clone and git checkout?

Answer

August Lilleaas picture August Lilleaas · Sep 4, 2011

The man page for checkout: http://git-scm.com/docs/git-checkout

The man page for clone: http://git-scm.com/docs/git-clone

To sum it up, clone is for fetching repositories you don't have, checkout is for switching between branches in a repository you already have.

Note: for those who have a SVN/CVS background and new to Git, the equivalent of git clone in SVN/CVS is checkout. The same wording of different terms is often confusing.

Related questions

How to enter command with password for git pull?

I want to do this command in one line: git pull && [my passphrase] How to do it?

Read More
How To Launch Git Bash from DOS Command Line?

I've got what I'm hoping is a simple question, but I haven't been able to find the answer yet. I would like to launch Git Bash from a DOS batch file. Here is what I tried so far: Launched Git …

Read More
Git alias with positional parameters

Basically I'm trying to alias: git files 9fa3 ...to execute the command: git diff --name-status 9fa3^ 9fa3 but git doesn't appear to pass positional parameters to the alias command. I have tried: [alias] files = "!git diff --name-status $1^ $1" files = "!git diff …

Read More