How to Clone a Git Repository (git clone)

git clone downloads a complete copy of a remote repository, including its full history, into a new local directory.

Key points

• Automatically sets up a remote named "origin" pointing back to the source repository
• Checks out the default branch into a working directory ready to edit
• git clone --depth 1 performs a shallow clone with only the latest commit, useful for CI when full history isn't needed

Example

git clone https://github.com/user/repo.git