Checkout sub directories in git (sparse checkouts)

//TODO en Français

SVN externals is a really nice feature I used a lot. Switching to git I was really missing it. Of course there is git-submodule but it’s not the same. Now, with version 1.7 git supports so called sparse checkouts which allow you to only include specific sub directories of a repository in your project. You still need to clone the whole repository, but afterwards you can tell git to only show the specified sub directories.

Here is how it works:

1. clone the other repository (in my case, for a Rails app, I did it in vendor/plugins/)

   git clone <repository_url> <directory>

2. cd to <directory>

   cd <directory>

3. enable sparsecheckout

   git config core.sparsecheckout true

4. add directories you want to have in your checkout to .git/info/sparse-checkout, e.g.

   echo app/models/ > .git/info/sparse-checkout
   echo lib/ >> .git/info/sparse-checkout

5. run read-tree

   git read-tree -m -u HEAD

ls now shows

app lib

Forgot a directory you wanted to include? Just repeat step 4 and 5.