Checkout subdirectories in Git

Question

Is it possible to check out subdirectories of a repository in Git   Imagine I am setting up a new WordPress installation  I will create two new directories for my plugin and theme customization    wordpress wp-content plugins myplugins   wordpress wp-content themes mytheme    I want to maintain these directories via Git  In Subversion  I would accomplish this by having trunk myplugins  and trunk mytheme  directories and checking out subdirectories  Does Git have a way to accomplish the same task using a single repository   I could just be missing the boat on some Git paradigm  as a long time SVN user with little exposure to Git   Edit  Multiple branches storing different content is an interesting way to handle this

User · Answer

git clone --filter from git 2 19 now works on GitHub  tested 2020-09-18  git 2 25 1  This option was added together with an update to the remote protocol  and it truly prevents objects from being downloaded from the server  To clone only objects required for d1 of this repository  https   github com cirosantilli test-git-partial-clone I can do  git clone     --depth 1     --filter blob none     --no-checkout     https   github com cirosantilli test-git-partial-clone     cd test-git-partial-clone git checkout master -- d1  I have covered this in more detail at  Git  How do I clone a subdirectory only of a Git repository

User · Answer

Actually   narrow  or  partial  or  sparse  checkouts are under current  heavy development for Git   Note  you ll still have the full repository under  git   So  the other two posts are current for the current state of Git but it looks like we will be able to do sparse checkouts eventually   Checkout the mailing lists if you re interested in more details -- they re changing rapidly

User · Answer

You can t checkout a single directory of a repository because the entire repository is handled by the single  git folder in the root of the project instead of subversion s myriad of  svn directories    The problem with working on plugins in a single repository is that making a commit to  e g   mytheme will increment the revision number for myplugin  so even in subversion it is better to use separate repositories    The subversion paradigm for sub-projects is svn externals which translates somewhat to submodules in git  but not exactly in case you ve used svn externals before

User · Answer

There is no real way to do that in git  And if you won   t be making changes that affect both trees at once as a single work unit  there is no good reason to use a single repository for both  I thought I would miss this Subversion feature  but I found that creating repositories has so little administrative mental overhead  simply due to the fact that repositories are stored right next to their working copy  rather than requiring me to explicitly pick some place outside of the working copy  that I got used to just making lots of small single-purpose repositories   If you insist  or really need it   though  you could make a git repository with just mytheme and myplugins directories and symlink those from within the WordPress install     MDCore wrote      making a commit to  e g   mytheme will increment the revision number for myplugin   Note that this is not a concern for git  if you do decide to put both directories in a single repository  because git does away entirely with the concept of monotonically increasing revision numbers of any form   The sole criterion for what things to put together in a single  repository in git is whether it constitutes a single unit  ie  in your case whether there are changes where it does not make sense to look at the edits in each directory in isolation  If you have changes where you need to edit files in both directories at once and the edits belong together  they should be one repository  If not  then don   t glom them together   Git really really wants you to use separate repositories for separate entities      submodules   Submodules do not address the desire to keep both directories in one repository  because they would actually enforce having a separate repository for each directory  which are then brought together in another repository using submodules  Worse  since the directories inside the WordPress install are not direct subdirectories of the same directory and are also part of a hierarchy with many other files  using the per-directory repositories as submodules in a unified repository would offer no benefit whatsoever  because the unified repository would not reflect any use case need

User · Answer

There is no real way to do that in git  And if you won   t be making changes that affect both trees at once as a single work unit  there is no good reason to use a single repository for both  I thought I would miss this Subversion feature  but I found that creating repositories has so little administrative mental overhead  simply due to the fact that repositories are stored right next to their working copy  rather than requiring me to explicitly pick some place outside of the working copy  that I got used to just making lots of small single-purpose repositories   If you insist  or really need it   though  you could make a git repository with just mytheme and myplugins directories and symlink those from within the WordPress install     MDCore wrote      making a commit to  e g   mytheme will increment the revision number for myplugin   Note that this is not a concern for git  if you do decide to put both directories in a single repository  because git does away entirely with the concept of monotonically increasing revision numbers of any form   The sole criterion for what things to put together in a single  repository in git is whether it constitutes a single unit  ie  in your case whether there are changes where it does not make sense to look at the edits in each directory in isolation  If you have changes where you need to edit files in both directories at once and the edits belong together  they should be one repository  If not  then don   t glom them together   Git really really wants you to use separate repositories for separate entities      submodules   Submodules do not address the desire to keep both directories in one repository  because they would actually enforce having a separate repository for each directory  which are then brought together in another repository using submodules  Worse  since the directories inside the WordPress install are not direct subdirectories of the same directory and are also part of a hierarchy with many other files  using the per-directory repositories as submodules in a unified repository would offer no benefit whatsoever  because the unified repository would not reflect any use case need

User · Answer

Sparse checkouts are now in Git 1 7   Also see the question    Is it possible to do a sparse checkout without checking out the whole repository first       Note that sparse checkouts still require you to download the whole repository  even though some of the files Git downloads won t end up in your working tree

User · Answer

There is no real way to do that in git  And if you won   t be making changes that affect both trees at once as a single work unit  there is no good reason to use a single repository for both  I thought I would miss this Subversion feature  but I found that creating repositories has so little administrative mental overhead  simply due to the fact that repositories are stored right next to their working copy  rather than requiring me to explicitly pick some place outside of the working copy  that I got used to just making lots of small single-purpose repositories   If you insist  or really need it   though  you could make a git repository with just mytheme and myplugins directories and symlink those from within the WordPress install     MDCore wrote      making a commit to  e g   mytheme will increment the revision number for myplugin   Note that this is not a concern for git  if you do decide to put both directories in a single repository  because git does away entirely with the concept of monotonically increasing revision numbers of any form   The sole criterion for what things to put together in a single  repository in git is whether it constitutes a single unit  ie  in your case whether there are changes where it does not make sense to look at the edits in each directory in isolation  If you have changes where you need to edit files in both directories at once and the edits belong together  they should be one repository  If not  then don   t glom them together   Git really really wants you to use separate repositories for separate entities      submodules   Submodules do not address the desire to keep both directories in one repository  because they would actually enforce having a separate repository for each directory  which are then brought together in another repository using submodules  Worse  since the directories inside the WordPress install are not direct subdirectories of the same directory and are also part of a hierarchy with many other files  using the per-directory repositories as submodules in a unified repository would offer no benefit whatsoever  because the unified repository would not reflect any use case need

User · Answer

There is no real way to do that in git  And if you won   t be making changes that affect both trees at once as a single work unit  there is no good reason to use a single repository for both  I thought I would miss this Subversion feature  but I found that creating repositories has so little administrative mental overhead  simply due to the fact that repositories are stored right next to their working copy  rather than requiring me to explicitly pick some place outside of the working copy  that I got used to just making lots of small single-purpose repositories   If you insist  or really need it   though  you could make a git repository with just mytheme and myplugins directories and symlink those from within the WordPress install     MDCore wrote      making a commit to  e g   mytheme will increment the revision number for myplugin   Note that this is not a concern for git  if you do decide to put both directories in a single repository  because git does away entirely with the concept of monotonically increasing revision numbers of any form   The sole criterion for what things to put together in a single  repository in git is whether it constitutes a single unit  ie  in your case whether there are changes where it does not make sense to look at the edits in each directory in isolation  If you have changes where you need to edit files in both directories at once and the edits belong together  they should be one repository  If not  then don   t glom them together   Git really really wants you to use separate repositories for separate entities      submodules   Submodules do not address the desire to keep both directories in one repository  because they would actually enforce having a separate repository for each directory  which are then brought together in another repository using submodules  Worse  since the directories inside the WordPress install are not direct subdirectories of the same directory and are also part of a hierarchy with many other files  using the per-directory repositories as submodules in a unified repository would offer no benefit whatsoever  because the unified repository would not reflect any use case need

User · Answer

You can t checkout a single directory of a repository because the entire repository is handled by the single  git folder in the root of the project instead of subversion s myriad of  svn directories    The problem with working on plugins in a single repository is that making a commit to  e g   mytheme will increment the revision number for myplugin  so even in subversion it is better to use separate repositories    The subversion paradigm for sub-projects is svn externals which translates somewhat to submodules in git  but not exactly in case you ve used svn externals before

User · Answer

There is an inspiration here  Just utilize shell regex or git regex   git checkout commit id     bat      bat in 1-depth subdir exclude current dir  shell regex   git checkout commit id    bat       bat in all subdir include current dir  git regex   Use quotation to escape shell regex interpretation and pass wildcards to git   The first one is not recursive  only files in 1-depth subdir  But the second one is recursive   As for your situation  the following may be enough   git checkout master     wp-content     git checkout master    wp-content      Just hack the lines as required

User · Answer

There is an inspiration here  Just utilize shell regex or git regex   git checkout commit id     bat      bat in 1-depth subdir exclude current dir  shell regex   git checkout commit id    bat       bat in all subdir include current dir  git regex   Use quotation to escape shell regex interpretation and pass wildcards to git   The first one is not recursive  only files in 1-depth subdir  But the second one is recursive   As for your situation  the following may be enough   git checkout master     wp-content     git checkout master    wp-content      Just hack the lines as required

User · Answer

As your edit points out  you can use two separate branches to store the two separate directories  This does keep them both in the same repository  but you still can t have commits spanning both directory trees  If you have a change in one that requires a change in the other  you ll have to do those as two separate commits  and you open up the possibility that a pair of checkouts of the two directories can go out of sync   If you want to treat the pair of directories as one unit  you can use  wordpress wp-content  as the root of your repo and use  gitignore file at the top level to ignore everything but the two subdirectories of interest  This is probably the most reasonable solution at this point    Sparse checkouts have been allegedly coming for two years now  but there s still no sign of them in the git development repo  nor any indication that the necessary changes will ever arrive there  I wouldn t count on them

User · Answer

Sparse checkouts are now in Git 1 7   Also see the question    Is it possible to do a sparse checkout without checking out the whole repository first       Note that sparse checkouts still require you to download the whole repository  even though some of the files Git downloads won t end up in your working tree

User · Answer

Actually   narrow  or  partial  or  sparse  checkouts are under current  heavy development for Git   Note  you ll still have the full repository under  git   So  the other two posts are current for the current state of Git but it looks like we will be able to do sparse checkouts eventually   Checkout the mailing lists if you re interested in more details -- they re changing rapidly

User · Answer

You can revert uncommitted changes only to particular file or directory   git checkout  some dir file txt

User · Answer

Actually   narrow  or  partial  or  sparse  checkouts are under current  heavy development for Git   Note  you ll still have the full repository under  git   So  the other two posts are current for the current state of Git but it looks like we will be able to do sparse checkouts eventually   Checkout the mailing lists if you re interested in more details -- they re changing rapidly

User · Answer

You can revert uncommitted changes only to particular file or directory   git checkout  some dir file txt

User · Answer

As your edit points out  you can use two separate branches to store the two separate directories  This does keep them both in the same repository  but you still can t have commits spanning both directory trees  If you have a change in one that requires a change in the other  you ll have to do those as two separate commits  and you open up the possibility that a pair of checkouts of the two directories can go out of sync   If you want to treat the pair of directories as one unit  you can use  wordpress wp-content  as the root of your repo and use  gitignore file at the top level to ignore everything but the two subdirectories of interest  This is probably the most reasonable solution at this point    Sparse checkouts have been allegedly coming for two years now  but there s still no sign of them in the git development repo  nor any indication that the necessary changes will ever arrive there  I wouldn t count on them

User · Answer

git clone --filter from git 2 19 now works on GitHub  tested 2020-09-18  git 2 25 1  This option was added together with an update to the remote protocol  and it truly prevents objects from being downloaded from the server  To clone only objects required for d1 of this repository  https   github com cirosantilli test-git-partial-clone I can do  git clone     --depth 1     --filter blob none     --no-checkout     https   github com cirosantilli test-git-partial-clone     cd test-git-partial-clone git checkout master -- d1  I have covered this in more detail at  Git  How do I clone a subdirectory only of a Git repository

User · Answer

Actually   narrow  or  partial  or  sparse  checkouts are under current  heavy development for Git   Note  you ll still have the full repository under  git   So  the other two posts are current for the current state of Git but it looks like we will be able to do sparse checkouts eventually   Checkout the mailing lists if you re interested in more details -- they re changing rapidly

User · Answer

You can t checkout a single directory of a repository because the entire repository is handled by the single  git folder in the root of the project instead of subversion s myriad of  svn directories    The problem with working on plugins in a single repository is that making a commit to  e g   mytheme will increment the revision number for myplugin  so even in subversion it is better to use separate repositories    The subversion paradigm for sub-projects is svn externals which translates somewhat to submodules in git  but not exactly in case you ve used svn externals before

User · Answer

One thing I don t like about sparse checkouts  is that if you want to checkout a subdirectory that is a few directories deep  your directory structure must contain all directories leading to it     How I work around this is to clone the repo in a place that is not my workspace and then create a symbolic link in my workspace directory to the subdirectory in the repository   Git works like this quite nicely because things like git status will display the change files relative to your current working directory

User · Answer

You can t checkout a single directory of a repository because the entire repository is handled by the single  git folder in the root of the project instead of subversion s myriad of  svn directories    The problem with working on plugins in a single repository is that making a commit to  e g   mytheme will increment the revision number for myplugin  so even in subversion it is better to use separate repositories    The subversion paradigm for sub-projects is svn externals which translates somewhat to submodules in git  but not exactly in case you ve used svn externals before

User · Answer

One thing I don t like about sparse checkouts  is that if you want to checkout a subdirectory that is a few directories deep  your directory structure must contain all directories leading to it     How I work around this is to clone the repo in a place that is not my workspace and then create a symbolic link in my workspace directory to the subdirectory in the repository   Git works like this quite nicely because things like git status will display the change files relative to your current working directory

[git] Checkout subdirectories in Git?

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