how to clone a local git repository whose name contains a `:'?

Question

I'm trying to clone a local git repository. The repository's name contains a `:'. This is confusing both me and git. I get the following error:

~/work/c% git clone ../a::b .
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/user/work/c/.git/
ssh: Could not resolve hostname ../a: Name or service not known
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

How would you escape the `:'? For now I'm just changing the name of the original repository :-)

I'm using zshell...

Answer 1

Does:

git clone -- ../a::b .

git clone -- "../a::b" .

git clone --local -- "../a::b" .

works better?

• The '--' will force git to consider ../a::b . as path parameters, not as options.
• The --local might help making Git use the right transport mechanism (a simple local copy)

---

Just to be sure, you could also try using the octal value of the colon character:

git clone -- "../a\072\072b" .

Answer 2

Don't know but perhaps with a UI client like Tortoise it works?

It seems git understand your a::b like a hostname:port...

Have you tried with ""?

Answer 3

It seems that this shouldn't be possible. If you read the Git URLs section of the git-pull manpage, you'll see that there's a special syntax that uses the '::' as a separator. More info on this <transport>::<address> construct can be found at the git-remote-helpers manpage.

As for finagling an interpretation other than this, it appears the expansion is taking place in git, and not in zsh, bash, or your shell of choice.