github - Check that git repository exists

Question

Is there any way how to check whether git repository exist just before perform git clone action? Something like git clone $REMOTE_URL --dry-run?

I would like to implement fast checking method which will check existence before the clone action will be performed. I expect that connection might be slow and repository might be big even more than 1GB, so I don't want to rely on time extensive operation due to simple validation. The clone will be performed asynchronously in the background when validation passes.

I found this https://superuser.com/questions/227509/git-ping-check-if-remote-repository-exists but it works from git repository context after initial clone action is done.

Maybe there is some git call which works without git repository context and return "some data" if repository on destination exist or error if doesn't.

Answer 1

The answer that you linked does what you want it to do.

Try running this in a folder without a repository in it:

git ls-remote https://github.com/git/git

It should show you the references on the remote, even though you haven't added a local repository with git init or done a git clone.

See more: https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-ls-remote.html