Git checkout tag without clone download#

Recent commits carry a lot of value, and the older the commits, the lower the value. I don't generally deal with repos that big, but I have had to work on some sizeable repositories, and the sad truth is that most of the time, you really don't need that history from 5 years ago. That history is a large part of where git gets its power, so you don't generally want to lose it, but there are times when it makes sense. Most of that size is taken up by the history of 117,251 commits, as opposed to the sheer number of files.

Git checkout tag without clone download#

Updating files: 100% ( 59281/59281 ), done.ĭoing a fresh clone, you need to download 1.9 million objects, equating to 631MiB.

Remote: Compressing objects: 100% ( 41/41 ), done.

Remote: Counting objects: 100% ( 44/44 ), done. Remote: Enumerating objects: 1933225, done. That's not surprising when you see the size of it: > git clone NET runtime git repository? If you have you should know it takes a looooong time to clone.

Background: when repositories get too big This is made possible by the git-replace tool. In this post I look at how you can split a repository in two, creating a 'history' repository, and a current repository, while retaining the ability to temporarily merge them again when required.