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Creating a Local Copy of a Repo


The next step is to create a local copy of the remote repo, by cloning the remote repo.

This lesson covers that part.

You can clone a repository to create a full copy of it on your computer. This copy includes the entire revision history, branches, and files of the original, so it behaves just like the original repository. For example, you can clone a repository from a hosting service like GitHub to your computer, giving you a complete local version to work with.

Cloning a repo automatically creates a remote named origin which points to the repo you cloned from.

The repo you cloned from is often referred to as the upstream repo.

HANDS-ON: Cloning a remote repo

1 Clone the remote repo (e.g., samplerepo-things to your computer.

Note that the URL of the GitHub project is different from the URL you need to clone a repo in that GitHub project. e.g.

GitHub project URL: https://github.com/se-edu/samplerepo-things
Git repo URL: https://github.com/se-edu/samplerepo-things.git (note the .git at the end)

You can use the git clone <repository-url> [directory-name] command to clone a repo.

  • <repository-url>: The URL of the remote repository you want to copy.
  • [directory-name] (optional): The name of the folder where you want the repository to be cloned. If you omit this, Git will create a folder with the same name as the repository.
git clone https://github.com/se-edu/samplerepo-things.git  # if using HTTPS
git clone git@github.com:se-edu/samplerepo-things.git  # if using SSH

git clone https://github.com/foo/bar.git my-bar-copy  # also specifies a dir to use

For exact steps for cloning a repo from GitHub, refer to this GitHub document.


FileClone / New ... and provide the URL of the repo and the destination directory.


FileNew ... → Choose as shown below → Provide the URL of the repo and the destination directory in the next dialog.



2 Verify the clone has a remote named origin pointing to the upstream repo.

Use the git remote -v command that you learned earlier.


Choose RepositoryRepository Settings menu option.