How do I clone into a non-empty directory?

Question

I have directory A with files matching directory B. Directory A may have other needed files. Directory B is a git repo.

I want to clone directory B to directory A but git-clone won't allow me to since the directory is non-empty.

I was hoping it would just clone .git and since all the files match I could go from there?

I can't clone into an empty directory because I have files in directory A that are not in directory B and I want to keep them.

Copying .git is not an option since I want refs to push/pull with and I don't want to set them up manually.

Is there any way to do this?

Update: I think this works, can anyone see any problems? -->

cd a git clone --no-hardlinks --no-checkout ../b a.tmp  mv a.tmp/.git . rm -rf a.tmp git unstage # apparently git thinks all the files are deleted if you don't do this 

Answer 1

This worked for me:

git init git remote add origin PATH/TO/REPO git fetch git reset origin/master  # Required when the versioned files existed in path before "git init" of this repo. git checkout -t origin/master 

NOTE: -t will set the upstream branch for you, if that is what you want, and it usually is.