Clone just the stable and one other branch in git?

Question

I'm just getting started with git and I have a question. My app has 10 other developers working on it, each one having their own branch like dev_XXXXX. So if I do a clone of the repository, do all of their code gets copied to my machine? In that case I dont want that. Suppose my branch is dev_swamy, how do I then clone just the stable branch and dev_swamy? Thanks.

Answer 1

By default git clone would fetch all branches, but those branches would be stored as remote-tracking branches: for example branch 'dev_XXXXX' would be stored as 'origin/dev_XXXXX' (with 'refs/remotes/origin/dev_XXXXX' as full name). Those remote-tracking branches wouldn't be visible in git branch output: you would need git branch -r to list remote-tracking branches (or git branch -a to list all branches). If those branches do not diverge too much from mainline, they wouldn't take too much disk space in repository. Therefore I don't see why you want to clone only selected branches.

Nevertheless if you want to have a clone with only two selected branches, you can do it like this:

1. First, create new empty repository

   $ mkdir repoclone
   $ cd repoclone/
   $ git init
   Initialized empty Git repository in /home/user/repoclone/.git/
   

2. Then add your repository under the name 'origin' (just like "git clone" would name it), requesting tracking of only two branches: 'master' and 'dev_swamy', using "git remote" command. Check that it was added correctly.

   $ git remote add -t master -t dev_swamy origin [email protected]:repo.git
   $ git remote 
   origin
   $ git remote show origin
   * remote origin
     Fetch URL: [email protected]:repo.git
     Push  URL: [email protected]:repo.git
     HEAD branch: master
     Remote branches:
       master          new (next fetch will store in remotes/origin)
       dev_swamy new (next fetch will store in remotes/origin)
   

   If the stable branch is called 'stable' rather than 'master', you would have of course to modify above example. Also there is -m <branch> option if you want specified branch to be default branch in remote.

3. Fetch from 'origin' (you could do this also by using -f option to "git remote add" above):

   $ git fetch
   remote: Counting objects: 282, done.
   remote: Compressing objects: 100% (193/193), done.
   remote: Total 282 (delta 82), reused 0 (delta 0)
   Receiving objects: 100% (282/282), 81.30 KiB | 135 KiB/s, done.
   Resolving deltas: 100% (82/82), done.
   From [email protected]:repo.git
    * [new branch]      master     -> origin/master
    * [new branch]      dev_swamy -> origin/dev_swamy
   From [email protected]:repo.git
    * [new tag]         v1.0       -> v1.0
    * [new tag]         v1.0.1    -> v1.0.1
    * [new tag]         v1.1       -> v1.1
   

4. Set up local branch 'master' (where you would do your work) to follow 'origin/master' (to have 'origin/master' as upstream), just like "git clone" would do:

   $ git checkout -t origin/master
   Branch master set up to track remote branch master from origin.
   Already on 'master'
   

   You can repeat this for branch 'dev_swamy'.

5. Now you can see how config file looks like. You can get exactly the same result by editing .git/config file to look like the following, and then doing "git fetch".

   $ cat .git/config  # or just open this file in your editor
   [core]
           repositoryformatversion = 0
           filemode = true
           bare = false
           logallrefupdates = true
   [remote "origin"]
           url = [email protected]:repo.git
           fetch = +refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master
           fetch = +refs/heads/dev_swamy:refs/remotes/origin/dev_swamy
   [branch "master"]
           remote = origin
           merge = refs/heads/master
   

Don't forget to introduce yourself to Git before starting work on repository (i.e. set 'user.name' and 'user.email' config variables; usually in per-user config file)!