How can I tell the depth of a git repository?

Question

A script I am debugging is supposed to use --depth 1 when cloning a git repository in order to avoid downloading all its history. However, I suspect it might be buggy and that it is actually performing a full clone.

How can I inspect the resulting repository to determine if it was cloned with --depth 1 or not?

Answer 1

If the contents of .git/shallow are the same as git rev-parse HEAD, the depth is 1.

Answer 2

After you made a shallow clone --depth 1 use

git rev-list --count --all

if it outputs 1 you only have 1 commit in the object database.

Does the script use the --no-single-branch option? This would explain why git fetches multiple commits (each for every branch or tag)