Documentation / urls.txton commit Merge branch 'jh/trace2' (49bc8ce)
   1GIT URLS[[URLS]]
   2----------------
   3
   4In general, URLs contain information about the transport protocol, the
   5address of the remote server, and the path to the repository.
   6Depending on the transport protocol, some of this information may be
   7absent.
   8
   9Git supports ssh, git, http, and https protocols (in addition, ftp,
  10and ftps can be used for fetching, but this is inefficient and
  11deprecated; do not use it).
  12
  13The native transport (i.e. git:// URL) does no authentication and
  14should be used with caution on unsecured networks.
  15
  16The following syntaxes may be used with them:
  17
  18- ssh://{startsb}user@{endsb}host.xz{startsb}:port{endsb}/path/to/repo.git/
  19- git://host.xz{startsb}:port{endsb}/path/to/repo.git/
  20- http{startsb}s{endsb}://host.xz{startsb}:port{endsb}/path/to/repo.git/
  21- ftp{startsb}s{endsb}://host.xz{startsb}:port{endsb}/path/to/repo.git/
  22
  23An alternative scp-like syntax may also be used with the ssh protocol:
  24
  25- {startsb}user@{endsb}host.xz:path/to/repo.git/
  26
  27This syntax is only recognized if there are no slashes before the
  28first colon. This helps differentiate a local path that contains a
  29colon. For example the local path `foo:bar` could be specified as an
  30absolute path or `./foo:bar` to avoid being misinterpreted as an ssh
  31url.
  32
  33The ssh and git protocols additionally support ~username expansion:
  34
  35- ssh://{startsb}user@{endsb}host.xz{startsb}:port{endsb}/~{startsb}user{endsb}/path/to/repo.git/
  36- git://host.xz{startsb}:port{endsb}/~{startsb}user{endsb}/path/to/repo.git/
  37- {startsb}user@{endsb}host.xz:/~{startsb}user{endsb}/path/to/repo.git/
  38
  39For local repositories, also supported by Git natively, the following
  40syntaxes may be used:
  41
  42- /path/to/repo.git/
  43- \file:///path/to/repo.git/
  44
  45ifndef::git-clone[]
  46These two syntaxes are mostly equivalent, except when cloning, when
  47the former implies --local option. See linkgit:git-clone[1] for
  48details.
  49endif::git-clone[]
  50
  51ifdef::git-clone[]
  52These two syntaxes are mostly equivalent, except the former implies
  53--local option.
  54endif::git-clone[]
  55
  56When Git doesn't know how to handle a certain transport protocol, it
  57attempts to use the 'remote-<transport>' remote helper, if one
  58exists. To explicitly request a remote helper, the following syntax
  59may be used:
  60
  61- <transport>::<address>
  62
  63where <address> may be a path, a server and path, or an arbitrary
  64URL-like string recognized by the specific remote helper being
  65invoked. See linkgit:gitremote-helpers[7] for details.
  66
  67If there are a large number of similarly-named remote repositories and
  68you want to use a different format for them (such that the URLs you
  69use will be rewritten into URLs that work), you can create a
  70configuration section of the form:
  71
  72------------
  73        [url "<actual url base>"]
  74                insteadOf = <other url base>
  75------------
  76
  77For example, with this:
  78
  79------------
  80        [url "git://git.host.xz/"]
  81                insteadOf = host.xz:/path/to/
  82                insteadOf = work:
  83------------
  84
  85a URL like "work:repo.git" or like "host.xz:/path/to/repo.git" will be
  86rewritten in any context that takes a URL to be "git://git.host.xz/repo.git".
  87
  88If you want to rewrite URLs for push only, you can create a
  89configuration section of the form:
  90
  91------------
  92        [url "<actual url base>"]
  93                pushInsteadOf = <other url base>
  94------------
  95
  96For example, with this:
  97
  98------------
  99        [url "ssh://example.org/"]
 100                pushInsteadOf = git://example.org/
 101------------
 102
 103a URL like "git://example.org/path/to/repo.git" will be rewritten to
 104"ssh://example.org/path/to/repo.git" for pushes, but pulls will still
 105use the original URL.