Help: clone

hg clone [OPTION]... SOURCE [DEST]

make a copy of an existing repository

Create a copy of an existing repository in a new directory.

If no destination directory name is specified, it defaults to the basename of the source.

The location of the source is added to the new repository's ".hg/hgrc" file, as the default to be used for future pulls.

Only local paths and "ssh://" URLs are supported as destinations. For "ssh://" destinations, no working directory or ".hg/hgrc" will be created on the remote side.

If the source repository has a bookmark called '@' set, that revision will be checked out in the new repository by default.

To check out a particular version, use -u/--update, or -U/--noupdate to create a clone with no working directory.

To pull only a subset of changesets, specify one or more revisions identifiers with -r/--rev or branches with -b/--branch. The resulting clone will contain only the specified changesets and their ancestors. These options (or 'clone src#rev dest') imply --pull, even for local source repositories.

In normal clone mode, the remote normalizes repository data into a common exchange format and the receiving end translates this data into its local storage format. --stream activates a different clone mode that essentially copies repository files from the remote with minimal data processing. This significantly reduces the CPU cost of a clone both remotely and locally. However, it often increases the transferred data size by 30-40%. This can result in substantially faster clones where I/O throughput is plentiful, especially for larger repositories. A side-effect of --stream clones is that storage settings and requirements on the remote are applied locally: a modern client may inherit legacy or inefficient storage used by the remote or a legacy Mercurial client may not be able to clone from a modern Mercurial remote.

Note:

Specifying a tag will include the tagged changeset but not the changeset containing the tag.

For efficiency, hardlinks are used for cloning whenever the source and destination are on the same filesystem (note this applies only to the repository data, not to the working directory). Some filesystems, such as AFS, implement hardlinking incorrectly, but do not report errors. In these cases, use the --pull option to avoid hardlinking.

Mercurial will update the working directory to the first applicable revision from this list:

null if -U or the source repository has no changesets
if -u . and the source repository is local, the first parent of the source repository's working directory
the changeset specified with -u (if a branch name, this means the latest head of that branch)
the changeset specified with -r
the tipmost head specified with -b
the tipmost head specified with the url#branch source syntax
the revision marked with the '@' bookmark, if present
the tipmost head of the default branch
tip

When cloning from servers that support it, Mercurial may fetch pre-generated data from a server-advertised URL. When this is done, hooks operating on incoming changesets and changegroups may fire twice, once for the bundle fetched from the URL and another for any additional data not fetched from this URL. In addition, if an error occurs, the repository may be rolled back to a partial clone. This behavior may change in future releases. See 'hg help -e clonebundles' for more.

Examples:

clone a remote repository to a new directory named hg/:
```
hg clone https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg/
```
create a lightweight local clone:
```
hg clone project/ project-feature/
```
clone from an absolute path on an ssh server (note double-slash):
```
hg clone ssh://user@server//home/projects/alpha/
```
do a streaming clone while checking out a specified version:
```
hg clone --stream http://server/repo -u 1.5
```
create a repository without changesets after a particular revision:
```
hg clone -r 04e544 experimental/ good/
```

clone (and track) a particular named branch:

hg clone https://www.mercurial-scm.org/repo/hg/#stable

See 'hg help urls' for details on specifying URLs.

Returns 0 on success.

options ([+] can be repeated):

-U	--noupdate	the clone will include an empty working directory (only a repository)
-u	--updaterev REV	revision, tag, or branch to check out
-r	--rev REV [+]	include the specified changeset
-b	--branch BRANCH [+]	clone only the specified branch
	--pull	use pull protocol to copy metadata
	--uncompressed	an alias to --stream (DEPRECATED)
	--stream	clone with minimal data processing
-e	--ssh CMD	specify ssh command to use
	--remotecmd CMD	specify hg command to run on the remote side
	--insecure	do not verify server certificate (ignoring web.cacerts config)

global options ([+] can be repeated):

-R	--repository REPO	repository root directory or name of overlay bundle file
	--cwd DIR	change working directory
-y	--noninteractive	do not prompt, automatically pick the first choice for all prompts
-q	--quiet	suppress output
-v	--verbose	enable additional output
	--color TYPE	when to colorize (boolean, always, auto, never, or debug)
	--config CONFIG [+]	set/override config option (use 'section.name=value')
	--debug	enable debugging output
	--debugger	start debugger
	--encoding ENCODE	set the charset encoding (default: UTF-8)
	--encodingmode MODE	set the charset encoding mode (default: strict)
	--traceback	always print a traceback on exception
	--time	time how long the command takes
	--profile	print command execution profile
	--version	output version information and exit
-h	--help	display help and exit
	--hidden	consider hidden changesets
	--pager TYPE	when to paginate (boolean, always, auto, or never) (default: auto)