GIT clone repo across local file system in windows

$ git clone --no-hardlinks /path/to/repo

The above command uses POSIX path notation for the directory with your git repository. For Windows it is (directory C:/path/to/repo contains .git directory):

C:\some\dir\> git clone --local file:///C:/path/to/repo my_project

The repository will be clone to C:\some\dir\my_project. If you omit file:/// part then --local option is implied.

I was successful in doing this using file://, but with one additional slash to denote an absolute path.

git clone file:///cygdrive/c/path/to/repository/

In my case I'm using Git on Cygwin for Windows, which you can see because of the /cygdrive/c part in my paths. With some tweaking to the path it should work with any git installation.

Adding a remote works the same way

git remote add remotename file:///cygdrive/c/path/to/repository/

the answer with the host name didn't work for me but this did :

git clone file:////home/git/repositories/MyProject.git/

You can specify the remote’s URL by applying the UNC path to the file protocol. This requires you to use four slashes:

git clone file:////<host>/<share>/<path>

For example, if your main machine has the IP 192.168.10.51 and the computer name main, and it has a share named code which itself is a git repository, then both of the following commands should work equally:

git clone file:////main/code
git clone file:////192.168.10.51/code

If the Git repository is in a subdirectory, simply append the path:

git clone file:////main/code/project-repository
git clone file:////192.168.10.51/code/project-repository