Quick tip: Clone a single folder from Github

#github #git #tutorial

Sometimes you find a repository on Github and you only really need a single folder.

How do you get it without cloning the entire repo?

Luckily Github just implemented sparse-checkout. This is a super-quick example of how it works.

Example repo

Let's say I wanted to clone Supabase's example Slack clone, which lives in the following folder:

├── connectors
├── examples
│   ├── slack-clone-basic # <-- github.com/supabase/supabase/examples/slack-clone-basic
├── libraries
├── web
└── README.md

Sparse Checkout

Here are all the steps I would need:

# 1. Copy an empty repo
git clone --no-checkout https://github.com/supabase/supabase

# 2. Move into the empty repo
cd supabase

# 3. Initialize sparse-checkout
git sparse-checkout init --cone

#4. Checkout the folder
git sparse-checkout set examples/slack-clone-basic

And viola! Now you have just the folder you want.

Troubleshooting

sparse-checkout was introduced in Git version 2.25. If you get see an error "git: 'sparse-checkout' is not a git command" then you probably need to update. You can use git --version to see what version you're on.

If you're on Mac (and used homebrew to install git) you can run brew upgrade git.