Is there a simple way to create a copy of a folder in a local repository, keeping track of exactly the same files (do not care about commit history, or untracked files)?
The folder contains a hierarchy of both tracked and untracked (but not ignored) files and directories. I basically want to recursively replicate the tracked structure. Is there a way other than copying everything, and then manually adding only the relevant files (there are a lot of them)?
The solution is to git clone the directory. Need to then take care of the remote origin url (which otherwise is set to the clone source). For example:
# Clone the repository
git clone <existing directory> <new directory>
cd <new directory>
# Set origin url to the same one as old repository
git remote set-url origin `git -C <existing directory> config --get remote.origin.url`
Another, slower option is to just clone from a remote repository (github / bitbucket?) which is @Sergey_S 's solution - which means downloading everything again.