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Updated: Wednesday, July 27, 2022
 
 

git-sparse-checkout (1)

Name

git-sparse-checkout - Reduce your working tree to a subset of tracked files

Synopsis

git sparse-checkout <subcommand> [<options>]

Description

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)