Re: [PATCH v4 3/4] gitfaq: shallow cloning a repository

From: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Date: Apr 29, 2020, 16:00 UTC
Message-ID: <CABPp-BG2zf8w6ouK3nn8bid_HKWh2g6Gu-UB65q3Z9V2D80X7A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20200429093811.8475-3-shouryashukla.oo@gmail.com>

On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 2:38 AM Shourya Shukla <shouryashukla.oo@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 23 quoted lines

>
> Add issue in 'Common issue' section which covers issues with cloning
> large repositories. Use partial cloning to selectively clone the
> repository.
>
> Signed-off-by: Shourya Shukla <shouryashukla.oo@gmail.com>
> ---
> I wanted to ask why is there no mention of partial cloning in
> the 'git-clone' documentation? Is it because it is an experimental
> feature?
>
>  Documentation/gitfaq.txt | 10 ++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/gitfaq.txt b/Documentation/gitfaq.txt
> index 7d294306f9..6f32846e3d 100644
> --- a/Documentation/gitfaq.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/gitfaq.txt
> @@ -243,6 +243,16 @@ I want to change the remote of my repository. How do I do that?::
>  One can list the remotes of a repository using `git remote -v` command.
>  The default name of a remote is 'origin'.
>
> +[[shallow-cloning]]

Why is this marked as "shallow-cloning"?

> +The repository I am trying to clone is too big. Is there an alternative
> +way of cloning it in lesser space?::
> +       A good way to save up space when cloning a repository is

"save space" instead of "save up space"?

Show 6 quoted lines

> +       by using `partial clones`. A partial clone will clone the
> +       full history of the repository but will skip out the entities
> +       specified by the `--filter` option one uses in `git clone`.
> +       Any entity which has not been cloned to save space can be cloned
> +       on-demand. See linkgit:partial-clone[1].
> +

I like this much better than suggesting shallow clones, though you should mention that partial clones (currently?) presume that you have an always-on network connection to the original repository because subsequent commands may need to fetch additional objects in order to complete.