git-sparse-checkout - Reduce your working tree to a subset of tracked files
git sparse-checkout <subcommand> [<options>]
GIT-SPARSE-CHECKOU(1) Git Manual GIT-SPARSE-CHECKOU(1)
NAME
git-sparse-checkout - Reduce your working tree to a subset of tracked
files
SYNOPSIS
git sparse-checkout <subcommand> [<options>]
DESCRIPTION
This command is used to create sparse checkouts, which means that it
changes the working tree from having all tracked files present, to only
have a subset of them. It can also switch which subset of files are
present, or undo and go back to having all tracked files present in the
working copy.
The subset of files is chosen by providing a list of directories in
cone mode (which is recommended), or by providing a list of patterns in
non-cone mode.
When in a sparse-checkout, other Git commands behave a bit differently.
For example, switching branches will not update paths outside the
sparse-checkout directories/patterns, and git commit -a will not record
paths outside the sparse-checkout directories/patterns as deleted.
THIS COMMAND IS EXPERIMENTAL. ITS BEHAVIOR, AND THE BEHAVIOR OF OTHER
COMMANDS IN THE PRESENCE OF SPARSE-CHECKOUTS, WILL LIKELY CHANGE IN THE
FUTURE.
COMMANDS
list
Describe the directories or patterns in the sparse-checkout file.
set
Enable the necessary sparse-checkout config settings
(core.sparseCheckout, core.sparseCheckoutCone, and index.sparse) if
they are not already set to the desired values, and write a set of
patterns to the sparse-checkout file from the list of arguments
following the set subcommand. Update the working directory to match
the new patterns.
To ensure that adjusting the sparse-checkout settings within a
worktree does not alter the sparse-checkout settings in other
worktrees, the set subcommand will upgrade your repository config
to use worktree-specific config if not already present. The
sparsity defined by the arguments to the set subcommand are stored
in the worktree-specific sparse-checkout file. See git-worktree(1)
and the documentation of extensions.worktreeConfig in git-config(1)
for more details.
When the --stdin option is provided, the directories or patterns
are read from standard in as a newline-delimited list instead of
from the arguments.
When --cone is passed or core.sparseCheckoutCone is enabled, the
input list is considered a list of directories. This allows for
better performance with a limited set of patterns (see CONE PATTERN
SET below). The input format matches the output of git ls-tree
--name-only. This includes interpreting pathnames that begin with a
double quote (") as C-style quoted strings. Note that the set
command will write patterns to the sparse-checkout file to include
all files contained in those directories (recursively) as well as
files that are siblings of ancestor directories. This may become
the default in the future; --no-cone can be passed to request
non-cone mode.
When --no-cone is passed or core.sparseCheckoutCone is not enabled,
the input list is considered a list of patterns. This mode is
harder to use and less performant, and is thus not recommended. See
the "Sparse Checkout" section of git-read-tree(1) and the "Pattern
Set" sections below for more details.
Use the --[no-]sparse-index option to use a sparse index (the
default is to not use it). A sparse index reduces the size of the
index to be more closely aligned with your sparse-checkout
definition. This can have significant performance advantages for
commands such as git status or git add. This feature is still
experimental. Some commands might be slower with a sparse index
until they are properly integrated with the feature.
WARNING: Using a sparse index requires modifying the index in a way
that is not completely understood by external tools. If you have
trouble with this compatibility, then run git sparse-checkout init
--no-sparse-index to rewrite your index to not be sparse. Older
versions of Git will not understand the sparse directory entries
index extension and may fail to interact with your repository until
it is disabled.
add
Update the sparse-checkout file to include additional directories
(in cone mode) or patterns (in non-cone mode). By default, these
directories or patterns are read from the command-line arguments,
but they can be read from stdin using the --stdin option.
reapply
Reapply the sparsity pattern rules to paths in the working tree.
Commands like merge or rebase can materialize paths to do their
work (e.g. in order to show you a conflict), and other
sparse-checkout commands might fail to sparsify an individual file
(e.g. because it has unstaged changes or conflicts). In such cases,
it can make sense to run git sparse-checkout reapply later after
cleaning up affected paths (e.g. resolving conflicts, undoing or
committing changes, etc.).
The reapply command can also take --[no-]cone and
--[no-]sparse-index flags, with the same meaning as the flags from
the set command, in order to change which sparsity mode you are
using without needing to also respecify all sparsity paths.
disable
Disable the core.sparseCheckout config setting, and restore the
working directory to include all files.
init
Deprecated command that behaves like set with no specified paths.
May be removed in the future.
Historically, set did not handle all the necessary config settings,
which meant that both init and set had to be called. Invoking both
meant the init step would first remove nearly all tracked files
(and in cone mode, ignored files too), then the set step would add
many of the tracked files (but not ignored files) back. In addition
to the lost files, the performance and UI of this combination was
poor.
Also, historically, init would not actually initialize the
sparse-checkout file if it already existed. This meant it was
possible to return to a sparse-checkout without remembering which
paths to pass to a subsequent set or add command. However, --cone
and --sparse-index options would not be remembered across the
disable command, so the easy restore of calling a plain init
decreased in utility.
SPARSE CHECKOUT
"Sparse checkout" allows populating the working directory sparsely. It
uses the skip-worktree bit (see git-update-index(1)) to tell Git
whether a file in the working directory is worth looking at. If the
skip-worktree bit is set, and the file is not present in the working
tree, then its absence is ignored. Git will avoid populating the
contents of those files, which makes a sparse checkout helpful when
working in a repository with many files, but only a few are important
to the current user.
The $GIT_DIR/info/sparse-checkout file is used to define the
skip-worktree reference bitmap. When Git updates the working directory,
it updates the skip-worktree bits in the index based on this file. The
files matching the patterns in the file will appear in the working
directory, and the rest will not.
To enable the sparse-checkout feature, run git sparse-checkout set to
set the patterns you want to use.
To repopulate the working directory with all files, use the git
sparse-checkout disable command.
FULL PATTERN SET
By default, the sparse-checkout file uses the same syntax as .gitignore
files.
While $GIT_DIR/info/sparse-checkout is usually used to specify what
files are included, you can also specify what files are not included,
using negative patterns. For example, to remove the file unwanted:
/*
!unwanted
CONE PATTERN SET
The full pattern set allows for arbitrary pattern matches and
complicated inclusion/exclusion rules. These can result in O(N*M)
pattern matches when updating the index, where N is the number of
patterns and M is the number of paths in the index. To combat this
performance issue, a more restricted pattern set is allowed when
core.sparseCheckoutCone is enabled.
The accepted patterns in the cone pattern set are:
1. Recursive: All paths inside a directory are included.
2. Parent: All files immediately inside a directory are included.
In addition to the above two patterns, we also expect that all files in
the root directory are included. If a recursive pattern is added, then
all leading directories are added as parent patterns.
By default, when running git sparse-checkout init, the root directory
is added as a parent pattern. At this point, the sparse-checkout file
contains the following patterns:
/*
!/*/
This says "include everything in root, but nothing two levels below
root."
When in cone mode, the git sparse-checkout set subcommand takes a list
of directories instead of a list of sparse-checkout patterns. In this
mode, the command git sparse-checkout set A/B/C sets the directory
A/B/C as a recursive pattern, the directories A and A/B are added as
parent patterns. The resulting sparse-checkout file is now
/*
!/*/
/A/
!/A/*/
/A/B/
!/A/B/*/
/A/B/C/
Here, order matters, so the negative patterns are overridden by the
positive patterns that appear lower in the file.
If core.sparseCheckoutCone=true, then Git will parse the
sparse-checkout file expecting patterns of these types. Git will warn
if the patterns do not match. If the patterns do match the expected
format, then Git will use faster hash- based algorithms to compute
inclusion in the sparse-checkout.
In the cone mode case, the git sparse-checkout list subcommand will
list the directories that define the recursive patterns. For the
example sparse-checkout file above, the output is as follows:
$ git sparse-checkout list
A/B/C
If core.ignoreCase=true, then the pattern-matching algorithm will use a
case-insensitive check. This corrects for case mismatched filenames in
the git sparse-checkout set command to reflect the expected cone in the
working directory.
When changing the sparse-checkout patterns in cone mode, Git will
inspect each tracked directory that is not within the sparse-checkout
cone to see if it contains any untracked files. If all of those files
are ignored due to the .gitignore patterns, then the directory will be
deleted. If any of the untracked files within that directory is not
ignored, then no deletions will occur within that directory and a
warning message will appear. If these files are important, then reset
your sparse-checkout definition so they are included, use git add and
git commit to store them, then remove any remaining files manually to
ensure Git can behave optimally.
SUBMODULES
If your repository contains one or more submodules, then submodules are
populated based on interactions with the git submodule command.
Specifically, git submodule init -- <path> will ensure the submodule at
<path> is present, while git submodule deinit [-f] -- <path> will
remove the files for the submodule at <path> (including any untracked
files, uncommitted changes, and unpushed history). Similar to how
sparse-checkout removes files from the working tree but still leaves
entries in the index, deinitialized submodules are removed from the
working directory but still have an entry in the index.
Since submodules may have unpushed changes or untracked files, removing
them could result in data loss. Thus, changing sparse
inclusion/exclusion rules will not cause an already checked out
submodule to be removed from the working copy. Said another way, just
as checkout will not cause submodules to be automatically removed or
initialized even when switching between branches that remove or add
submodules, using sparse-checkout to reduce or expand the scope of
"interesting" files will not cause submodules to be automatically
deinitialized or initialized either.
Further, the above facts mean that there are multiple reasons that
"tracked" files might not be present in the working copy: sparsity
pattern application from sparse-checkout, and submodule initialization
state. Thus, commands like git grep that work on tracked files in the
working copy may return results that are limited by either or both of
these restrictions.
SEE ALSO
git-read-tree(1) gitignore(5)
GIT
Part of the git(1) suite
Git 2.36.0 04/17/2022 GIT-SPARSE-CHECKOU(1)