You could literally link the two object directories? I just tried this and it seems to work: git clone git://github.com/git/git mkdir git2 cd git2 git

You could literally link the two object directories? I just tried this and it seems to work: git clone git://github.com/git/git mkdir git2 cd git2 git init cd .git/ rm -rf objects ln -s ../../git/.git cd ../ git remote add origin git://github.com/git/git git fetch # returned without downloading anything git checkout master ls # etc. If you seriously want to use this, you'll probably want to hard link the contents, instead. But iirc git clone from local disk already does that, for you? In short: clone your local copy and taking it from there?