How to clone git repository from its zip

A related post here provides the information needed to grab the .git directory and simplify the answer that umläute provided:

• Grab the .git directory by cloning a bare repository

  $ mkdir repo
  $ git clone --bare http://github/user/repo repo
  

• Make the .git directory and move the cloned files

  $ mkdir repo/.git
  $ mv repo/* repo/.git
  

• Unzip the repository

  $ unzip repo.zip
  

• Re-initialize the repository

  $ cd repo
  $ git init
  

• Verify you're sync'ed

  $ git pull
  

• Reset the HEAD to clean up the status

  $ git reset HEAD
  

• Here's the log for the repo ... repo location - http://github.com/udacity/fullstack-nanodegree-vm

  $ git log
  commit ebcbda650bc81d7f4856f5314a0689cea5b43086
  Merge: 574774b b5b787e
  Author: Karl Krueger <[email protected]>
  Date:   Tue Apr 7 11:39:54 2015 -0700`
  
          Merge pull request #3 from pmallory/sharedDirAlert
  
          Add a login alert to explain how to access Vagrant's shared directory
  
  commit b5b787efdb1ecec0c3c9c7f9c0fd4732f984fcb3
  Author: Philip Mallory <[email protected]>
  Date:   Mon Apr 6 15:40:32 2015 -0700`
  
         move the alert into the motd
  
  commit b8012f33c86b0d19fc4c2b972af092e88d00978f
  Author: Philip Mallory <[email protected]>
  Date:   Mon Apr 6 14:32:01 2015 -0700`
  
         Add a login alert to explain how to access Vagrant's shared directory
  
  commit 574774ba29ccd661154431d5600240f090440c37
  Author: Lorenzo Brown <[email protected]>
  Date:   Wed Mar 11 14:08:02 2015 -0700`
  
         Update pg_config.sh
  
         Added installs for Auth&Auth
  
  commit 88fc5537b1a0017a1d76af4587a22412473809a4
  Author: Lorenzo Brown <[email protected]>
  Date:   Wed Mar 4 13:00:25 2015 -0800`
  
         Update and rename vagrant to vagrant/catalog/README.txt
  
  commit f978cdc14c62b7295d8da1a95452faaa1bd108b8
  Author: Lorenzo Brown <[email protected]>
  Date:   Wed Feb 4 11:06:03 2015 -0800`
  
         Update Vagrantfile
  
         switched to port forwarding on 8080
  
  commit d6a3a26578ef3c6d01d28abca76d817938892c7f
  Author: Lorenzo Brown <[email protected]>
  Date:   Tue Feb 3 14:52:34 2015 -0800`
  
         Update Vagrantfile
  
         Added:
  
         config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 80, host: 8080
         config.vm.network "forwarded_port", guest: 5000, host: 5000
  
         FSF uses these two ports for lessons 2 & 3 respectively.
  
  commit 752a79e408c7328ef7f1766d1b97bb468ffed90a
  Author: Mike Wales <[email protected]>
  Date:   Mon Feb 2 11:21:29 2015 -0800`
  
         Removed .vagrant directory
  
  commit 5af9d19adf9ab19b1d886f6cc78e556f864b42dd
  Author: Mike Wales <[email protected]>
  Date:   Mon Feb 2 11:16:45 2015 -0800`
  
         Initial commit.
  

If you have downloaded the repository (including the.git dir), it's quite simple.

• unzip the repository

  $ unzip repo.zip
  

• configure a remote in your repository that points to the clone URI

  $ cd repo
  $ git init
  $ git remote add origin https://github.com/user/repo.git
  

• resync the repositories

  $ git pull
  

In practice, it seems that the "zip" download from github does not contain the .git directory, so this doesn't help :-(

Probably the best bet you have is to do a clone on a machine that does have stable access, and then zip the .git directory and fetch that somehow....