From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:59:00 GMT
Subject: Re: Git repository clonning
Message-ID: <m38vk1sjj4.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <4F3E384A.3040006@gmail.com>

Martin Přecechtěl <precechtel@gmail.com> writes:

> I have a problem and I would like to ask you for help. I need to
> somehow access the git repository over network and read files from
> it. In the concrete, only thing I need is to read some files from
> repository, where I have files needed for installation of
> computers. So on  computer where installation takes place, I need to
> read from this repository some files needed for installation
> process.

Where this repository is?  Is it on computer you control?  If yes, why
not use some networking filesystem or just rsync checked out files?

> I tried command git clone <my_repository> but this command
> download the whole repository which size is now almost 8GB files + 4GB
> .git folder. This process is very slow. So I want to ask you if there
> is a way how to access my repository (read some files from it) but to
> significantly improve speed. Is there for example something what will
> somehow map the repository to folder and then dowload only thouse
> files which are accessed?

You can try to use shallow clone, which would download only tip of
history... but all the files:

  $ git clone --depth=0 <URL>

If remote repository is configured correctly, and all the files are
inside one directory, you can try to use remote archive:

  $ git archive --remote=<URL> --prefix=<dir>/ --output=<dir>.tar \
    HEAD:<dir>

It wouldprobably not work.

If there is some web interface, like gitweb or GitHub, you can
download snapshots of some subdirectory from there.

HTH
-- 
Jakub Narębski