Re: Git not creating new directory when cloning

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jun 21, 2018, 17:45 UTC
Message-ID: <20180621174523.GB30249@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAKepmagD1VgRx+79rS9Swe8OL8SOwvRn6Yn-u_FCUy-OCUMeFQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Jun 21, 2018 at 12:04:11PM -0400, Jack Adrian Zappa wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Hi, I was trying to clone a repo into a non-existent directory. but it
> gave me a failure:
> 
> $  git clone  https://github.com/jelera/vim-javascript-syntax.git
> ~/.vim/bundle/vim-javascript-syntax
> fatal: destination path
> '/home/username/.vim/bundle/vim-javascript-syntax' already exists and
> is not an empty directory.

That exact command works just fine for me. Are you absolutely sure that the directory did not exist?

Which version of Git are you using?

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> > The name of a new directory to clone into. The "humanish" part of
> > the source repository is used if no directory is explicitly given
> > (repo for /path/to/repo.git and foo for host.xz:foo/.git). Cloning
> > into an existing directory is only allowed if the directory is
> > empty.
> 
> Which to me, implies that the directory doesn't have to exist prior to
> cloning.  So is this a bug or a misunderstanding?

Correct, in general it should _not_ exist.

-Peff