problems cloning angular-seed to my apache htdocs directory to start a project

[Michael Laird]

This is probably a git problem, but it is a direct flow out from the AngularJS tutorial. I have spent many hours studying a lot of sources and trying things, and I cannot get started with AngularJS. Here's a summary of my situation, as best I can describe it.

I want to clone a directory of files to start my first AngularJS project and put those files in Apache's htdocs directory with the name of my project, e.g., newProject. I've used the ProGit book, a bunch of tutorials, and Stackoverflow, and after many hours, still don't have it.

From all my messing around, I may have 'polluted' my git. With no newProject directory in the htdocs directory (ie, after deleting prior copies), I point git at htdocs and get a command prompt ending in htdocs. There, I can do a cd newProjects and get a new command prompt ending in htdocs/newProject, even though the directory does not exist. A git status returns fatal:not a git repo (or any of parent directories): .git I have tried rm -rf .git at that prompt and get no git response, just another same commmand prompt. What's going on?

When I add a newProject directory to htdocs and do what ProGit says

git clone git://github.com/angular/angular-seed.git newProject

I get fatal:destination path newProject exists and is not empty, even though Windows Explorer says it is an empty directory, and a git status at that prompt says fatal:not a repo (. . .) .git

When I try the commands at How do you clone a git repository into a specific folder? as follows

git clone git://github.com/angular/angular-seed:newProject htdocs

I get fatal:destination path newProject exists and is not empty A git status at that prompt returns fatal: not a repository

I have also tried the above command without the htdocs, and get the same result.

I have a hunch that I need to reset something in git and then do a correct command to clone the angular-seed directory of files and get it renamed newProject. What do I do?

[Michael Laird]

After a lot of thrashing, I found the problem. The Windows7 Program Files directory is a system file and requires Administrator permission to add/modify anything. Hence, the clone fails, but puts some record into git, which confused me and then made future clone attempts even more confusing with new error messages.

After I moved the project file into the C:/Users/ etc.  part of the directory tree, the clone succeeds, directories and files get built, and git status starts returning expected information. (Fireworks don't go off though) Apache has to be reconfigured in the httpd/conf file. For a localhost environment, change both DocumentRoot and Directory.  A little Google searching will get you to good "how to" pages.

Hope this helps, if you are struggling with clones to apache/htdocs