Cloning / Reading only history /log of a git repository

Question

Within a localy cloned git repository i can watch the history with

git log

In a small tool i do only need the history of a repository, not the code. Is there a way to clone a repository without the code (history only) ?

Is there any other way to get the history only from a git repository.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Clone the repository with the --bare flag:

git clone --bare ...

A "bare" repository in Git just contains the version control information and no working files (no tree) and it doesn't contain the special .git sub-directory. Instead, it contains all the contents of the .git sub-directory directly in the main directory itself.

Read more in the documentation on it, or this helpfull page about setting up server environments using the option.

Answer 2

If you only want to view the history, you can use the partial clone feature with filtering out the blobs(file contents).

git clone --filter=blob:none YOUR_GIT_URL

Ref:

1. git clone --filter
2. Get up to speed with partial clone and shallow clone