How do I clone a large Git repository on an unreliable connection?

git bash clone git-clone
khunshan picture khunshan · Feb 13, 2012 · Viewed 7.9k times · Source

I want to clone LibreOffice. From the official website, this is what's written:

All our source code is hosted in git:

Clone: $ git clone git://anongit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core # (browse)

Clone (http): $ git clone http://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/libreoffice/core.git # slower

Tarballs: http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/src/

please find the latest versions (usually near the bottom)

now, when I write this command in git bash to clone, it starts fetching. But the repository is so big that after hours I lose connectivity for a few seconds, it rolls back the download, and I get nothing.

Is there any way I can download the repository smoothly even if interruptions occur?

P.S. I am a new user of Git and I use a 1 MB DSL internet connection. The repository must be over 1 GB.

Answer

Sylvain Defresne picture Sylvain Defresne · Feb 13, 2012

The repository is accessible via the http protocol (aka dumb protocol) here: http://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/libreoffice/core.git.

You can download everything here with wget or another download manager, and you'll have a clone of the repository. After that, you rename the directory from core.git to .git, and use the following command to tell git about the remote url:

$ git remote add remote http://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/libreoffice/core.git
$ git reset --hard HEAD

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