Git (since 1.8.3) now has an official way to fetch the full history of a shallow clone: git fetch –unshallow From the git fetch documentation: –unshallow If the source repository is complete, convert a shallow repository to a complete one, removing all the limitations imposed by shallow repositories. If the source repository is shallow, fetch … Read more
Starting with Git 2.5.0 (which needs to be available at both the client and server side) you can set uploadpack.allowReachableSHA1InWant=true on the server side to enable fetching of specific SHA1s: git init git remote add origin <url> git fetch –depth 1 origin <sha1> git checkout FETCH_HEAD Note that I did not find a syntax to … Read more
–depth is a git fetch option. I see the doc doesn’t really highlight that git clone does a fetch. When you fetch, the two repos swap info on who has what by starting from the remote’s heads and searching backward for the most recent shared commit in the fetched refs’ histories, then filling in all … Read more
After doing a shallow clone, to be able to checkout other branches from remote, Run (thanks @jthill): git remote set-branches origin ‘*’ After that, do a git fetch -v Finally git checkout the-branch-i-ve-been-looking-for Step 1 can also be done manually by editing .git/config. For instance, change the folloing line from: fetch = +refs/heads/master:refs/remotes/origin/master to (replace … Read more