Is it possible to do a sparse checkout without checking out the whole repository first?

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Please note that this answer does download a complete copy of the data from a repository. The git remote add -f command will clone the whole repository. From the man page of git-remote:

With -f option, git fetch <name> is run immediately after the remote information is set up.

Try this:

mkdir myrepo
cd myrepo
git init
git config core.sparseCheckout true
git remote add -f origin git://...
echo "path/within_repo/to/desired_subdir/*" > .git/info/sparse-checkout
git checkout [branchname] # ex: master

Now you will find that you have a “pruned” checkout with only files from path/within_repo/to/desired_subdir present (and in that path).

Note that on windows command line you must not quote the path, i.e. you must change the 6th command with this one:

echo path/within_repo/to/desired_subdir/* > .git/info/sparse-checkout

if you don’t you’ll get the quotes in the sparse-checkout file, and it will not work

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