git checkout specify repository path?

Question

Is it possible to checkout a git repository without cd-ing into the directory first?

$ pwd
/home/wonk

$ git checkout dev </home/wonk/repo/path>    # <-- like this?

Comments

Do you mean you would like the repo to be created in /home/wonk directly, without first changing into the directory?

git checkout $url /home/wonk/repo should work fine, or maybe I misunderstand the question.

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I'm in directory A and want to checkout a specific branch in directory B without cd into B.
What I do now:

cd B                    # enter in B
git checkout $branch    # change branch
cd A                    # go back to A

What I would like to do:

git checkout $branch $repo_path # change branch in $repo_path without changing directories

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The command below will re-download the repo again so it's not a cached checkout, but is probably close to what you wanted in that there's no need to change between directories:

git -C /path/to/parent/of/B clone $repo-url B -b $branch

The -C flag allows specifying the path to clone into. Adjust the path to point to B if you want the folder to be inside B rather than the top-level being B.

Answer 1

i believe that the short answer is "no" - git is not going to act on a repo without being below it's git root - in fact, even then, the latest version of git will refuse to do anything, unless the repo is owned by the same user, or is added to a whitelist

the obvious solution is already posted by the OP

cd $repo ; git checkout $branch ; cd -

... so i assume that there is some reason to literally avoid changing directories - a variation on that would be to do the work in a sub-shell

$ repo=/home/wonk/repo/path
$ branch=dev
$ pwd
/home/wonk
$ ( cd $repo ; git checkout $branch )
$ pwd
/home/wonk