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what is the best solution to solve this problem. We have a big repo. Due to security restriction people are not allowed to have copies of files on mobile workstations like laptops. But there are folders within the repo that are excluded from this rule. The goal is to be able to easily develop inside this subdirectory and pull and push and handle branches of the main repo.

So the question is here is there anyway to clone/checkout just a subdirectory from a git repo without having a full copy of the repo locally. Doing my research I came across some solutions. Maybe someone can help clarify which would be the easiest way to solve this problem.

  • sparse checkout (but you have to have a full copy of your repo in .git folder)
  • submodules (seems to be hard to maintain and collaborate)
  • subtree (looks promising)
  • git archive (checkout a directory but can you update and push back)

Thanks in advance for any help.

corona-extra
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That is not the concept of Git. Git is a decentralized version control system. The local copy is the main concept. Normally you should avoid large repositories and you should exclude media and upload folders for example. Git isn't made for large files. For that is the Git LFS project.

You can set only rights on the complete repository if you give someone rights then he can clone the whole repository and you don't have some security in that case and it doesn't matter if you clone a folder or the complete repository.

The correct way could be to remove all important and large files / folders from the repository. And make a repository without real data. You have to make a new repository because all old committed files stay in the repo. There you can cleanup your files and add only scripts and files that you need to develop.

You can work with submodules but that is really a lot of work.

René Höhle
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  • Thanks. There are no explicit git roles for specific folder. its more a company rule how to handle data. And there are no media or large files. its just the amount of code. The idea is to enable for example designers to work only with the css and html files without having to checkout all other code. – corona-extra Jan 04 '16 at 21:39
  • Hmm better here is to give them complete access and make a code rewiew and there is a cool plugin (Gerrit) where you can make code review for special users. Perhaps that is a solution. Otherwise you have to use Submodules. But normally you need the whole project to run the project. – René Höhle Jan 04 '16 at 21:54