Re: [git-users] How hard would it be to implement sparse fetching/pulling?

> On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 06:42:54PM -0800, vit via Git for human beings wrote:
> 
>> I'm looking for ways to improve fetch/pull/clone time for large git
>> (mono)repositories with unrelated source trees (that span across multiple
>> services).
>> I've found sparse checkout approach appealing and helpful for most of
>> client-side operations (e.g. status, reset, commit, add etc)
>> The problem is that there is no feature like sparse fetch/pull in git, this
>> means that ALL objects in unrelated trees are always fetched.
>> It takes a lot of time for large repositories and results in some practical
>> scalability limits for git.
>> This forced some large companies like Facebook and Google to move to
>> Mercurial as they were unable to improve client-side experience with git
>> and Microsoft has developed GVFS which seems to be a step back to CVCS
>> world.
> [...]
> 
> (To anyone interested, there's a cross-post to the main Git list which
> Vitaly failed to mention: [1]. I think it could spark some interesting
> discussion.)
> 
> As to the essence of the question, I think you blame GVFS for no real
> reason. While Microsoft is being Microsoft — their implementation of
> GVFS is written in .NET and *requires* Windows 10 (this one is beyond
> me), it's based on an open protocol [2] which basically assumes the
> presence of a RESTful HTTP endpoint at the "Git server side" and
> apparently designed to work well with the repository format the current
> stock Git uses which makes it implementable on both sides by anyone
> interested.
> 
> The second hint I have is that the idea of fetching data lazily
> is being circulated among the Git developers for some time already, and
> something is really being done in this venue so you could check and see
> what's there [3, 4] and maybe trial it and help out those who works on this
> stuff.
> 
> 1. https://public-inbox.org/git/CANxXvsMbpBOSRKaAi8iVUikfxtQp=kofZ60N0pHXs+R+q1k3_Q@mail.gmail.com/
> 2. https://github.com/Microsoft/GVFS/blob/master/Protocol.md
> 3. https://public-inbox.org/git/?q=lazy+fetch
> 4. https://public-inbox.org/git/?q=partial+clone
>