Clone contents of a GitHub repository (without the folder itself)

If the folder is not empty, a slightly modified version of @JohnLittle's answer worked for me:

git init
git remote add origin https://github.com/me/name.git
git pull origin master

As @peter-cordes pointed out, the only difference is using https protocol instead of git, for which you need to have SSH keys configured.

If the current directory is empty, you can do that with:

git clone [email protected]:me/name.git .

(Note the . at the end to specify the current directory.) Of course, this also creates the .git directory in your current folder, not just the source code from your project.

This optional [directory] parameter is documented in the git clone manual page, which points out that cloning into an existing directory is only allowed if that directory is empty.

You can specify the destination directory as second parameter of the git clone command, so you can do:

git clone <remote> .

This will clone the repository directly in the current local directory.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work if there are other, non-related directories already in the same dir. Looking for a solution. The error message is: "fatal: destination path '.' already exists...".

The solution in this case is:

git init
git remote add origin [email protected]:me/name.git
git pull origin master

This recipe works even if there are other directories in the one you want to checkout in.