Is it possible to do a sparse checkout without checking out the whole repository first

Question

I m working with a repository with a very large number of files that takes hours to checkout  I m looking into the possibility of whether Git would work well with this kind of repository now that it supports sparse checkouts but every example that I can find does the following   git clone  lt path gt  git config core sparsecheckout true echo  lt dir gt   gt   git info sparse-checkout git read-tree -m -u HEAD   The problem with this sequence of commands is the original clone also does a checkout  If you add -n to the original clone command  then the read-tree command results in the following error   error  Sparse checkout leaves no entry on working directory  How can do the sparse checkout without checking out all the files first

User · Answer

I found the answer I was looking for from the one-liner posted earlier by pavek (thanks!) so I wanted to provide a complete answer in a single reply that works on Linux (GIT 1.7.1):

1--> mkdir myrepo
2--> cd myrepo
3--> git init
4--> git config core.sparseCheckout true
5--> echo 'path/to/subdir/' > .git/info/sparse-checkout
6--> git remote add -f origin ssh://...
7--> git pull origin master

I changed the order of the commands a bit but that does not seem to have any impact. The key is the presence of the trailing slash "/" at the end of the path in step 5.

User · Answer

In 2020 there is a simpler way to deal with sparse-checkout without having to worry about  git files  Here is how I did it   git clone  lt URL gt  --no-checkout  lt directory gt  cd  lt directory gt  git sparse-checkout init --cone   to fetch only root files git sparse-checkout set apps my app libs my lib   etc  to list sub-folders to checkout   they are checked out immediately after this command  no need to run git pull   Note that it requires git version 2 25 installed  Read more about it here  https   github blog 2020-01-17-bring-your-monorepo-down-to-size-with-sparse-checkout   UPDATE   The above git clone command will still clone the repo with its full history  though without checking the files out  If you don t need the full history  you can add --depth parameter to the command  like this     create a shallow clone    with only 1  since depth equals 1  latest commit in history git clone  lt URL gt  --no-checkout  lt directory gt  --depth 1

User · Answer

Sadly none of the above worked for me so I spent very long time trying different combination of sparse-checkout file   In my case I wanted to skip folders with IntelliJ IDEA configs   Here is what I did     Run git clone https   github com myaccount myrepo git --no-checkout  Run git config core sparsecheckout true  Created  git info sparse-checkout with following content    idea     idea modules        Run  git checkout --  to get all files     Critical thing to make it work was to add    after folder s name   I have git 1 9

User · Answer

Git clone has an option  --no-checkout or -n  that does what you want   In your list of commands  just change   git clone  lt path gt    To this   git clone --no-checkout  lt path gt    You can then use the sparse checkout as stated in the question

User · Answer

I had a similar use case  except I wanted to checkout only the commit for a tag and prune the directories   Using --depth 1 makes it really sparse and can really speed things up   mkdir myrepo cd myrepo git init git config core sparseCheckout true git remote add origin  lt url gt     Note  no -f option echo  path within repo to subdir    gt   git info sparse-checkout git fetch --depth 1 origin tag  lt tagname gt  git checkout  lt tagname gt

User · Answer

Please note that this answer does download a complete copy of the data from a repository  The git remote add -f command will clone the whole repository  From the man page of git-remote      With -f option  git fetch  lt name gt  is run immediately after the remote information is set up      Try this   mkdir myrepo cd myrepo git init git config core sparseCheckout true git remote add -f origin git       echo  path within repo to desired subdir     gt   git info sparse-checkout git checkout  branchname    ex  master   Now you will find that you have a  pruned  checkout with only files from path within repo to desired subdir present  and in that path    Note that on windows command line you must not quote the path  i e  you must change the 6th command with this one   echo path within repo to desired subdir    gt   git info sparse-checkout   if you don t you ll get the quotes in the sparse-checkout file  and it will not work

User · Answer

Steps to sparse checkout only specific folder   1  git clone --no-checkout   lt project clone url gt    2  cd  lt project folder gt  3  git config core sparsecheckout true    You must do this  4  echo   lt path you want to sparce gt      gt   git info sparse-checkout      You must enter    at the end of the path such that it will take all contents of that folder  5  git checkout  lt branch name gt   Ex  master

User · Answer

I took this from TypeScript definitions library  types  Let s say the repo has this structure  types     dependency      This requires minimum git version 2 27 0  which is likely newer than the default on most machines  More complicated procedures are available in older versions  but not covered by this guide  git clone --sparse --filter blob none --depth 1  lt forkedUrl gt  git sparse-checkout add types  lt type gt  types  lt dependency type gt       This will check out the types identity folder to your local machine  --sparse initializes the sparse-checkout file so the working directory starts with only the files in the root of the repository  --filter blob none will exclude files  fetching them only as needed  --depth 1 will further improve clone speed by truncating commit history  but it may cause issues as summarized here

User · Answer

Based on this answer by apenwarr and this comment by Miral I came up with the following solution which saved me nearly 94  of disk space when cloning the linux git repository locally while only wanting one Documentation subdirectory     cd linux   du -sh  git   2 1G     git 894M        du -sh  2 9G        mkdir    linux-sparse-test   cd    linux-sparse-test   git init Initialized empty Git repository in      linux-sparse-test  git    git config core sparseCheckout true   git remote add origin    linux   Parameter  origin master  saves a tiny bit if there are other branches   git fetch --depth 1 origin master remote  Enumerating objects  65839  done  remote  Counting objects  100   65839 65839   done  remote  Compressing objects  100   61140 61140   done  remote  Total 65839  delta 6202   reused 22590  delta 3703  Receiving objects  100   65839 65839   173 09 MiB   10 05 MiB s  done  Resolving deltas  100   6202 6202   done  From    linux    branch              master     - gt  FETCH HEAD     new branch         master     - gt  origin master   echo  Documentation hid     gt   git info sparse-checkout   git checkout master Branch  master  set up to track remote branch  master  from  origin   Already on  master    ls -l total 4 drwxr-xr-x 3 abe abe 4096 May  3 14 12 Documentation     du -sh  git   181M     git 100K         du -sh 182M        So I got down from 2 9GB to 182MB which is already quiet nice   I though didn t get this to work with git clone --depth 1 --no-checkout --filter blob none file        linux linux-sparse-test  hinted here  as then the missing files were all added as removed files to the index  So if anyone knows the equivalent of git clone --filter blob none for git fetch  we can probably save some more megabytes   Reading the man page of git-rev-list also hints that there is something like --filter sparse path      but I didn t get that to work either    All tried with git 2 20 1 from Debian Buster

User · Answer

In git 2 27  it looks like git sparse checkout has evolved  Solution in this answer does not work exactly the same way  compared to git 2 25   git clone  lt URL gt  --no-checkout  lt directory gt  cd  lt directory gt  git sparse-checkout init --cone   to fetch only root files git sparse-checkout set apps my app libs my lib   etc  to list sub-folders to checkout   they are checked out immediately after this command  no need to run git pull   These commands worked better  git clone --sparse  lt URL gt   lt directory gt  cd  lt directory gt  git sparse-checkout init --cone   to fetch only root files git sparse-checkout add apps my app git sparse-checkout add libs my lib  See also   git-clone --sparse and git-sparse-checkout add

User · Answer

Works in git 2 28 git clone --filter blob none --no-checkout --depth 1 --sparse  lt project-url gt  cd  lt project gt  git sparse-checkout init --cone  Specify the files and folders you want to clone git sparse-checkout add  lt folder gt   lt innerfolder gt   lt folder2 gt   lt innerfolder2 gt  git checkout

User · Answer

In my case  I want to skip the Pods folder when cloning the project  I did step by step like below and it works for me  Hope it helps   mkdir my folder cd my folder git init git remote add origin -f  lt URL gt  git config core sparseCheckout true  echo   Pods   n     gt   git info sparse-checkout git pull origin master   Memo  If you want to skip more folders  just add more line in sparse-checkout file

User · Answer

Yes  Possible to download a folder instead of downloading the whole repository  Even any last commit  Nice way to do this   D  Lab gt git svn clone https   github com Qamar4P LolAdapter git trunk lol-adapter -r HEAD    -r HEAD will only download last revision  ignore all history     Note trunk and  specific-folder   Copy and change URL before and after  trunk   I hope this will help someone  Enjoy     Updated on 26 Sep 2019

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I m new to git but it seems that if I do git checkout for each directory then it works  Also  the sparse-checkout file needs to have a trailing slash after every directory as indicated  Someone more experience please confirm that this will work   Interestingly  if you checkout a directory not in the sparse-checkout file it seems to make no difference  They don t show up in git status and git read-tree -m -u HEAD doesn t cause it to be removed  git reset --hard doesn t cause the directory to be removed either  Anyone more experienced care to comment on what git thinks of directories that are checked out but which are not in the sparse checkout file

User · Answer

Updated answer 2020  There is now a command git sparse-checkout  that I present in detail with Git 2 25  Q1 2020  nicono s answer illustrates its usage  git sparse-checkout init --cone   to fetch only root files git sparse-checkout add apps my app git sparse-checkout add libs my lib  It has evolved with Git 2 27 and knows how to  quot reapply quot  a sparse checkout  as in here  Note that with Git 2 28  git status will mention that you are in a sparse-checked-out repository Original answer  2016 git 2 9  June 2016  will generalize the --no-checkout option to git worktree add  the command which allows to works with multiple working trees for one repo  See commit ef2a0ac  29 Mar 2016  by Ray Zhang  OneRaynyDay   Helped-by  Eric Sunshine  sunshineco   and Junio C Hamano  gitster    Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 0d8683c  13 Apr 2016  The git worktree man page now includes  -- no- checkout    By default  add checks out  lt branch gt   however  --no-checkout can be used to suppress checkout in order to make customizations  such as configuring sparse-checkout

[git] Is it possible to do a sparse checkout without checking out the whole repository first?

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