Is it possible to download all commits but not the files themselves? I want to run bisect but download the versions from the build server instead of compiling myself.
asked Dec 10, 2019 at 23:28
1 Answer
When you run git bisect you can supply --no-checkout as argument if you do not want to checkout a new working tree for each iteration.
Same goes for git clone --no-checkout to avoid a working tree based on HEAD after the clone.
You can run git bisect run my_script <arguments> having my_script do whatever you want after each checkout.
In summary:
git clone <repo> --no-checkout
git bisect --no-checkout run my_script arguments
EDIT:
As per the suggestion of @phd, since recent versions (v2.2x) of git, "partial clones" are now supported meaning you can supply a clone "filter".
In your case we'll use --filter=blob:none and --filter=tree:0 and only retain commit-objects, but it requires the server to have a version of git installed that understands the filter or you'll get a warning:
warning: filtering not recognized by server, ignoring
The clone command you'll want to use:
git clone <repo> --filter=blob:none --filter=tree:0 --no-checkout
-
2That stops git creating the files on the working dir, but clone still downloads them to .git/objects Commented Dec 11, 2019 at 3:25
-
That's what he asked for, was my interpretation. "Download all the commits but not the files". He'll have the history but not the current working tree.– zrrbiteCommented Dec 11, 2019 at 5:08
-
You cannot run git bisect (or git anything) without a .git/ folder (except ofcourse the obvious ones like git init, git clone, etc)– zrrbiteCommented Dec 11, 2019 at 7:55
-
@phd "only commits without trees and blobs." exactly Commented Dec 11, 2019 at 15:32
-
I updated the answer with "partial-clone" syntax for blobs and trees– zrrbiteCommented Dec 12, 2019 at 8:11
git clone --filter=blob:nonebut for this you need the very latest client and the very latest server that supports Git Protocol version v2. Further reading: stackoverflow.com/a/48852630/7976758, stackoverflow.com/a/52916879/7976758, stackoverflow.com/a/57896644/7976758git bisectand usegit clone --depthto avoid cloning the entire repository. Combine that with--bareor--no-checkout.