Git clone without .git directory

Question

Is there a flag to pass to git when doing a clone, say don\'t clone the .git directory? If not, how about a flag to delete the .git di

Answer 1

since you only want the files, you don't need to treat it as a git repo.

rsync -rlp --exclude '.git' user@host:path/to/git/repo/ .

and this only works with local path and remote ssh/rsync path, it may not work if the remote server only provides git:// or https:// access.