Git not creating new directory when cloning
- From
- Jack Adrian Zappa <adrianh.bsc@gmail.com>
- Date
- Jun 21, 2018, 16:04 UTC
- Message-ID
- <CAKepmagD1VgRx+79rS9Swe8OL8SOwvRn6Yn-u_FCUy-OCUMeFQ@mail.gmail.com>
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.
(the command was taken from install procedure from https://github.com/jelera/vim-javascript-syntax)
The directory "/home/username/.vim/bundle" already existed, but "'/home/username/.vim/bundle/vim-javascript-syntax" did not. Upon creating the "vim-javascript-syntax" sub-directory, the clone command succeeded. From what I read from the docs (https://git-scm.com/docs/git-clone):
Show 7 quoted lines
> git clone [--template=<template_directory>] > [-l] [-s] [--no-hardlinks] [-q] [-n] [--bare] [--mirror] > [-o <name>] [-b <name>] [-u <upload-pack>] [--reference <repository>] > [--dissociate] [--separate-git-dir <git dir>] > [--depth <depth>] [--[no-]single-branch] [--no-tags] > [--recurse-submodules[=<pathspec>]] [--[no-]shallow-submodules] > [--jobs <n>] [--] <repository> [<directory>]
...
> <directory> > > 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?
Thanks,
A