Re: [PATCH] fetch: add config to avoid fetching every branch in shallow repo

From: Harald Nordgren <haraldnordgren@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 22, 2026, 15:37 UTC
Message-ID: <CAHwyqnUjDJNjER2AxFXOR6G3sOJKpsXj-agzmm7410_QAFu8PQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <15c85d2d-4fb0-427d-b52e-8e4dd958dcb9@gmail.com>

On Tue, Sep 22, 2026 at 4:53 PM Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 15 quoted lines

>
> On 22/09/2026 14:00, Harald Nordgren wrote:
> >>> If it is the former then we should think
> >>> how we can improve the behavior of "git remote add" in a sparse
> >>> repository to prevent it adding a wildcard fetch refspec and instead
> >>> setup the new remote to fetch only the branch(es) we're interested in.
> >>
> >> I didn't even consider that, that sounds like an interesting idea!
> >
> > Would you suggest we do that instead of this, or in addition to this
> > fix?
>
> I'd say instead - if we can fix "git remote add" then the problem
> shouldn't arise in the first place which is better than having an opt-in
> config option that most users are probably unaware of.

That makes a lot of sense.

However, I think there is info missing on the local side that we can't get without making a network call to the newly added remote, like its branches (and default branch). How do we handle that?

Harald