It's just git clone remote://git-repo/url
. You do not need to initialize anything if you can clone.
Note that having a remote URL that ends in something like "reponame.git" will create a new directory named "reponame" in which the repository will be created, NOT the directory you are currently in.
So if you run git status
right after git clone
, you are in the wrong directory, you have to cd
into it first.