What is the difference between heroku git:clone -a <app> and git clone <heroku-git-url>?

Question

I deleted the local repo of my heroku app, then I wanted to clone it, so normally I use git clone , which worked in this case:

git clone https://git.heroku.com/<app-name>.git . However, in the settings of my app on Heroku's dashbord, it says I should use heroku git:clone -a <app-name> (this requires Heroku CLI which I already have installed.

So far I have tried cloning the my heroku app repo in both of the ways mentioned ( git clone... and heroku:git clone -a... ). In both cases it worked and I got my source code properly cloned.

In both cases node_modules was not cloned, which is understandable since I run npm i to install the needed ones specified in the package.json file. The question is: what is the difference between these two ways of cloning? I push my code using git push heroku master and that also works fine. My understanding so far is that there are no differences between the two mentioned ways of cloning a repo.

*Please note that there is no github involved in this at all.

Answer 1

The heroku git:clone command has its source in packages/git/src/commands/git/clone.ts , and, from the documentation , mainly adds a heroku Git remote to simplify future pushes

So check your git remote -v in both: you will see the difference.