Can we get a git clone flag to override the "required empty directory" behaviour?

Hi,

I run a project with 2 repositories. One is a vagrant based toolchain (a VM that runs a LAMP server), and the other is the source code. Because I want my users to keep and make their changes to a clone of the source repository, we can't use submodules. They make their changes, test locally, and push them at me when they're done.

The source code goes in a 'www' subdirectory, but for an improved user experience, I include a pre-configured version of the config file in that 'www' directory. That way, after they check out the code and start their local server, it just works. Easy.

What I would like to do is git clone inside that directory. Alas, git will not let you clone in any directory containing a file.

Today we use `the workaround`, which involves doing a git init, adding a remote origin, fetching, and finally checking it out.

http://stackoverflow.com/a/18999726

This is `fine`, but it's not a good user experience. All we really want is a clone, and there just happens to be a configuration file pre-installed in the same directory.

Can we please get a flag (say -f or --force) for git clone that overrides the default behavior of not allowing you to clone in to a non-empty directory. If there already was a .git directory in that directory, sure that's a no-go scenario. An with a name like --force, it should be aggressive, overwriting anything it sees. Again, git can already do this, it's just a lot more long winded that it should be.

Thanks,

Mike Kasprzak