Shell: don't fail git clone if folder already exists

Question

I'm writing an automated script.

At some point, I'm calling git clone <repo>. But there is a chance this operation is already done.

How can I call git clone --no-fail so that it ignores if repository exists?

Thanks

Answer 1

The most stable solution would be to simply let it fail and print the error message. If you think that's too ugly for your scenario, you may redirect it to /dev/null:

folder="foo"
if ! git clone "${url}" "${folder}" 2>/dev/null && [ -d "${folder}" ] ; then
    echo "Clone failed because the folder ${folder} exists"
fi

---

Otherwise you can do something like this:

if [ ! -d "$FOLDER" ] ; then
    git clone "$URL" "$FOLDER"
fi

but that would be vulnerable to race conditions.

Answer 2

A bit late to the party but I'm doing something similar but I want to ensure the repo is up to date if it already exists so to expand on the above answer if the repo already existed you could then pull to ensure it's up to date.

if [ ! -d "$FOLDER" ] ; then
    git clone $URL $FOLDER
else
    cd "$FOLDER"
    git pull $URL
fi

Answer 3

It makes the repo latest.

git -C "$TARGET_DIR" pull || git clone https://github.com/<repo>.git "$TARGET_DIR"