Re: How hard would it be to implement sparse fetching/pulling?

> Hi guys,
> 
> 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, 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 may take 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 while Microsoft has developed GVFS, which seems to be a step back
> to CVCS world.
> 
> I want to get a feedback (from more experienced git users than I am)
> on what it would take to implement sparse fetching/pulling.
> (Downloading only objects related to the sparse-checkout list)
> Are there any issues with missing hashes?
> Are there any fundamental problems why it can't be done?
> Can we get away with only client-side changes or would it require
> special features on the server side?
> 
> If we had such a feature then all we would need on top is a separate
> tool that builds the right "sparse" scope for the workspace based on
> paths that developer wants to work on.
> 
> In the world where more and more companies are moving towards large
> monorepos this improvement would provide a good way of scaling git to
> meet this demand.
> 
> PS. Please don't advice to split things up, as there are some good
> reasons why many companies decide to keep their code in the monorepo,
> which you can easily find online. So let's keep that part out the
> scope.
> 
> -Vitaly
>