Cloning a Git Repo Into a Non-Empty Directory

I have a WordPress plugin deployed to a site via zip installation and want to replace the code in the plugin directory with the versioned code from the repository and/or change the branch on the server.

SSH into the server and change directory to the plugin.

Create a temporary directory:

mkdir temp

Clone the code into the temporary directory using https protocol which will prompt for a username and password (a personal access token needs to be pre-configured):

git clone <repository-https-URL> temp

Move the .git folder to the target directory:

mv temp/.git ./

Remove the temporary directory:

rm -rf temp

Check out the repository files:

git checkout .

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