From: Lars Schneider <larsxschneider@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 14:09:18 GMT
Subject: [RFC] Clone repositories recursive with depth 1
Message-ID: <DE5B8B46-B185-4258-A1C8-07E46072CD5D@gmail.com>

Hi,

I have a clean build machine and I want to clone my source code to this machine while transferring only the minimal necessary amount of data. Therefore I use this command:

git clone --recursive --depth 1 --single-branch <url>

Apparently this does not clone the submodules with "--depth 1" (using Git 2.4.9). As a workaround I tried:

git clone --depth 1 --single-branch <url>
cd <repo-name>
git submodule update --init --recursive --depth 1

However, this does not work either as I get:
fatal: reference is not a tree: <correct sha1 of the submodule referenced by the main project>
Unable to checkout <correct sha1 of the submodule referenced by the main project> in submodule path <submodule path>

How would you clone the repo? Is the behavior above expected? If not, should the "--depth 1" flag be applied recursively to all submodules on a clone --recursive? Has a patch implementing this a chance to get in?

Thanks,
Lars