Answer by Gene Bo for How do you clone a Git repository into a specific folder?

Regarding this line from the original post:

"I know how to move the files after I've cloned the repo, but this seems to break git"

I am able to do that and I don't see any issues so far with my add, commit, push, pull operations.

This approach is stated above, but just not broken down into steps. Here's the steps that work for me:

1. clone the repo into any fresh temporary folder
2. cd into that root folder you just cloned locally
3. copy the entire contents of the folder, including the /.git directory - into any existing folder you like; (say an eclipse project that you want to merge with your repo)

The existing folder you just copied the files into , is now ready to interact with git.