Developers should be aware that the depth 1 clone operation only pulls down one branch. If the remote repository contains other branches, they won't be able to check them out locally without a pathspec error. After a git clone depth 1 operation, attempts to checkout an alternate branch will trigger a pathspec error.
Shallow clone is very efficient for cloning only the files with no revision history. This can be beneficial for many continuous integration(CI) processes where we delete the repository at the end of the build. It can also be very useful for making quick commits into the repository.
There are quite many configuration and log files that are local to a repository. But there is no danger in copying them directly, for example when restoring backups or moving the repository to another directory/harddrive/machine.
Simply clone your project's repo twice (or even more often). When your work on a feature branch is done, simply push that branch and check it out on your 2nd copy to run tests there. You can pick up a new story and work on that on your "main" project directory.
Note that Git 1.9/2.0 (Q1 2014) has removed that limitation.
See commit 82fba2b, from Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy (pclouds
):
Now that git supports data transfer from or to a shallow clone, these limitations are not true anymore.
The documentation now reads:
--depth <depth>::
Create a 'shallow' clone with a history truncated to the specified number of revisions.
That stems from commits like 0d7d285, f2c681c, and c29a7b8 which support clone, send-pack /receive-pack with/from shallow clones.
smart-http now supports shallow fetch/clone too.
All the details are in "shallow.c
: the 8 steps to select new commits for .git/shallow
".
Update June 2015: Git 2.5 will even allow for fetching a single commit!
(Ultimate shallow case)
Update January 2016: Git 2.8 (Mach 2016) now documents officially the practice of getting a minimal history.
See commit 99487cf, commit 9cfde9e (30 Dec 2015), commit 9cfde9e (30 Dec 2015), commit bac5874 (29 Dec 2015), and commit 1de2e44 (28 Dec 2015) by Stephen P. Smith (``).
(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster
-- in commit 7e3e80a, 20 Jan 2016)
This is "Documentation/user-manual.txt
"
A
<<def_shallow_clone,shallow clone>>
is created by specifying thegit-clone --depth
switch.
The depth can later be changed with thegit-fetch --depth
switch, or full history restored with--unshallow
.Merging inside a
<<def_shallow_clone,shallow clone>>
will work as long as a merge base is in the recent history.
Otherwise, it will be like merging unrelated histories and may have to result in huge conflicts.
This limitation may make such a repository unsuitable to be used in merge based workflows.
Update 2020:
git fetch --shallow-exclude=
to prevent fetching all historygit fetch --shallow-since=
to prevent fetching old commits.For more on the shallow clone update process, see "How to update a git shallow clone?".
As commented by Richard Michael:
to backfill history:
git pull --unshallow
And Olle Härstedt adds in the comments:
To backfill part of the history:
git fetch --depth=100
.
See some of the answers to my similar question why-cant-i-push-from-a-shallow-clone and the link to the recent thread on the git list.
Ultimately, the 'depth' measurement isn't consistent between repos, because they measure from their individual HEADs, rather than (a) your Head, or (b) the commit(s) you cloned/fetched, or (c) something else you had in mind.
The hard bit is getting one's Use Case right (i.e. self-consistent), so that distributed, and therefore probably divergent repos will still work happily together.
It does look like the checkout --orphan
is the right 'set-up' stage, but still lacks clean (i.e. a simple understandable one line command) guidance on the "clone" step. Rather it looks like you have to init
a repo, set up a remote
tracking branch (you do want the one branch only?), and then fetch
that single branch, which feels long winded with more opportunity for mistakes.
Edit: For the 'clone' step see this answer
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