CODEWITHSUNDEEP
git
dspjm
dspjm

Reputation: 5830

How to clone a git repo piecemeal

I'm cloning the Linux kernel repository. The repository is so huge and my network is so slow that I can't clone it all at once. That may keep my computer on for a whole week.

If I stop the cloning mid-operation, progress would be lost. How can I partially clone a git repository?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 948

Answers (4)

Karl Bielefeldt
Karl Bielefeldt

Reputation: 49008

A clone is actually a series of smaller steps. In a nutshell, it first downloads a list of references, then it retrieves the pack file or loose object file for each of those references. There's currently no way to resume an interrupted clone automatically, because a clone usually sends one big pack file, but with some work and research you should be able to request smaller packs manually, the same as someone who does a series of pulls over time.

Look at the git book chapter on transfer protocols and the git fetch-pack command for more information. Also, git's source code is available on github, so you may be able to add a resume option yourself, or at least use it to get an idea of how clones are done internally.

Upvotes: 0

djechlin
djechlin

Reputation: 60748

git clone --depth 100 will only grab the last 100 commits.

In general it looks like what you actually want is unsupported:

All kind of say "this doesn't exist yet."

But some large repos also host "dumb" http ways to retrieve the repo (not git-layer clone) to solve this problem. Linux kernel may.

Upvotes: 0

cexbrayat
cexbrayat

Reputation: 18402

I'm not sure what you mean by separately but git clone is going to clone the whole repo as there is no way to clone just some part of a repo.

But you can do a shallow clone with just a depth of one commit and/or only one branch

git clone --depth=1 --single-branch --branch master

That will just grab the last commit of the master branch.

Upvotes: 2

intellidiot
intellidiot

Reputation: 11228

Cloning cannot be resumed, if it's interrupted you'd need to start over. There can be a couple of workaround though:

You can use shallow clone i.e. git clone --depth=1, then you can deepen this repository using git fetch --depth=N, with increasing N. But disclaimer is, I have never tried myself.

Another option could be git-bundle. The bundle itself is a single file, which you can download via HTTP or FTP with resume support (via BitTorrent, rsync or using any download manager). You can have somebody to create a bundle for you and then download it and create a clone from that. Correct the configuration and next of fetch from the original repo.

Upvotes: 5

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