{"id":6786,"date":"2020-02-18T16:11:50","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T11:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/?p=6786"},"modified":"2020-02-18T16:13:44","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T11:13:44","slug":"shallow-clone-large-git-repository","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahmadawais.com\/shallow-clone-large-git-repository\/","title":{"rendered":"Shallow Clone a Large Git Repository Quickly"},"content":{"rendered":"

Say you have a large git repository say 1 GB or even bigger. It may have a lot of branches and a long history. You now want to clone it to make some changes and create a pull request. Cloning it in its entirety with git clone<\/code> would be a bad idea. Instead, do this:<\/p>\n

git clone -b <branch> <url> --depth=1<\/pre>\n
A practical example would be:<\/p>\n
git clone -b master https:\/\/github.com\/gatsbyjs\/gatsby --depth=1<\/pre>\n
The giant 735.03<\/span> MB Gatsby repository, cloned this way is about 680 MB in size. I read that Jira is 677MB, with the working directory being another 320MB, when you clone this way.<\/p>\n
Explanation:#<\/a><\/h3>\n
    \n
  • -b <branch><\/code> to define the exact branch you want to clone<\/li>\n
  • --depth=n<\/code> to pull down only the latest n<\/code> commits<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    You can work this magic when pulling down the code as well:<\/p>\n
    git pull --rebase origin <branch> --depth=1<\/pre>\n
    A practical example would be:<\/p>\n
    git pull --rebase origin master --depth=1<\/pre>\n
    That’s about it. You are now shallow cloning and pulling your git repo. It doesn’t make that huge of an impact but I like to stay minimal as far as I can.<\/p>\n
    Use your code for good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
    Learn how to git shallow clone in case of big git repositories and only download the latest n commits from a single branch you specify.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,215],"tags":[255,256],"class_list":["post-6786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tutorials","category-web","tag-git-clone","tag-git-shallow-clone"],"yoast_head":"\nShallow Clone a Large Git Repository Quickly<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn how to git shallow clone in case of big git repositories and only download the latest n commits from a single branch you specify.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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