where are the source files after fetching a git repository

Question

I just installed Git and fetched a repository from gitorious.org. The fetch was successful according to the git gui application. However when I look in the directory where I set up the local repository, there are no source files.

I have H:\dev\qt\.git. Under .git folder there are a bunch of subfolders and some files. There is nothing under H:\dev\qt except for the .git subfolder. The fetch I did earlier, clearly fetched something since the the .git subfolder is around 500 MB now. I am guessing I need to do some sort of unpacking to get the source files. I am totally new to git so if someone could kindly provide some pointers that would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Answer 1

If you literally just did a fetch, all of the files are in the .git folder. However, you will never directly modify files in the .git folder yourself. Since you said you fetched, and did not clone, I'm assuming you initialized your local repository at H:\dev\qt\ and then added the remote at gitorious.org. Rather than a fetch, you can do a pull, which will merge all changes from the remote branch that your current branch is tracking into the working tree. Or, in this case, since this is the first time you're working with the repository, you should just do a clone:

git clone <url of git repo at gitorious.org>

That will pull down a copy of the repository and set up the working tree for you.

Also, I recommend reading this free online book about git, which is super awesome: http://progit.org/book/

Hope that helps clarify things a bit!