git - incomplete Git clone

Question

I am working on a web project and we're using Git vcs. I am using the ubuntu distribution of linux. Please why isn't "clone" copying all the files in the repo to my local dev directory from the github? I've tried cloning several times, it does clone the repo but the files are incomplete(hidden files are missing)

Answer 1

Note that those files ( .gitignore, .editorconfig, .travis.yml and .htaccess) are not hidden (there is no hidden attribute in Unix like you have in Windows)
And git wouldn't store that metadata information anyway.

They simple aren't directly listed by a simple ls.

So git clone does clone everything.

But to see all the files, including the dotfiles, you need a ls -a (as Steinar comments).

You can define an alias like:

 alias lh='ls -a | egrep "^\."'

And 'lh' would display only the dotfiles.