# git-sparse-checkout

## NAME



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


## SYNOPSIS



           _git sparse-checkout_ (init | list | set | add | reapply | disable | check-rules) [<options>]
    


## DESCRIPTION



           This command is used to create sparse checkouts, which change the
           working tree from having all tracked files present to only having
           a subset of those files. 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 (the default), 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, populate the sparse-checkout file from the list of
               arguments following the _set_ subcommand, and update the working
               directory to match.
    
               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.
    
               By default, the input list is considered a list of
               directories, matching the output of **git ls-tree -d**
               **--name-only**. This includes interpreting pathnames that begin
               with a double quote (") as C-style quoted strings. Note that
               all files under the specified directories (at any depth) will
               be included in the sparse checkout, as well as files that are
               siblings of either the given directory or any of its ancestors
               (see _CONE PATTERN SET_ below for more details). In the past,
               this was not the default, and **--cone** needed to be specified or
               **core.sparseCheckoutCone** needed to be enabled.
    
               When **--no-cone** is passed, the input list is considered a list
               of patterns. This mode has a number of drawbacks, including
               not working with some options like **--sparse-index**. As
               explained in the "Non-cone Problems" section below, we do not
               recommend using it.
    
               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.
    
           _check-rules_
               Check whether sparsity rules match one or more paths.
    
               By default **check-rules** reads a list of paths from stdin and
               outputs only the ones that match the current sparsity rules.
               The input is expected to consist of one path per line,
               matching the output of **git ls-tree --name-only** including that
               pathnames that begin with a double quote (") are interpreted
               as C-style quoted strings.
    
               When called with the **--rules-file** _< file>_ flag the input files
               are matched against the sparse checkout rules found in _< file>_
               instead of the current ones. The rules in the files are
               expected to be in the same form as accepted by **git**
               **sparse-checkout set --stdin**(in particular, they must be
               newline-delimited).
    
               By default, the rules passed to the **--rules-file** option are
               interpreted as cone mode directories. To pass non-cone mode
               patterns with **--rules-file** , combine the option with the
               **--no-cone** option.
    
               When called with the **-z** flag, the format of the paths input on
               stdin as well as the output paths are \0 terminated and not
               quoted. Note that this does not apply to the format of the
               rules passed with the **--rules-file** option.
    


## EXAMPLES



           **git sparse-checkout set MY/DIR1 SUB/DIR2**
               Change to a sparse checkout with all files (at any depth)
               under MY/DIR1/ and SUB/DIR2/ present in the working copy (plus
               all files immediately under MY/ and SUB/ and the toplevel
               directory). If already in a sparse checkout, change which
               files are present in the working copy to this new selection.
               Note that this command will also delete all ignored files in
               any directory that no longer has either tracked or
               non-ignored-untracked files present.
    
           **git sparse-checkout disable**
               Repopulate the working directory with all files, disabling
               sparse checkouts.
    
           **git sparse-checkout add SOME/DIR/ECTORY**
               Add all files under SOME/DIR/ECTORY/ (at any depth) to the
               sparse checkout, as well as all files immediately under
               SOME/DIR/ and immediately under SOME/. Must already be in a
               sparse checkout before using this command.
    
           **git sparse-checkout reapply**
               It is possible for commands to update the working tree in a
               way that does not respect the selected sparsity directories.
               This can come from tools external to Git writing files, or
               even affect Git commands because of either special cases (such
               as hitting conflicts when merging/rebasing), or because some
               commands didn’t fully support sparse checkouts (e.g. the old
               **recursive** merge backend had only limited support). This
               command reapplies the existing sparse directory specifications
               to make the working directory match.
    


## INTERNALS — 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.
    


## INTERNALS — NON-CONE PROBLEMS



           The **$GIT_DIR/info/sparse-checkout** file populated by the **set** and
           **add** subcommands is defined to be a bunch of patterns (one per
           line) using the same syntax as **.gitignore** files. In cone mode,
           these patterns are restricted to matching directories (and users
           only ever need supply or see directory names), while in non-cone
           mode any gitignore-style pattern is permitted. Using the full
           gitignore-style patterns in non-cone mode has a number of
           shortcomings:
    
           •   Fundamentally, it makes various worktree-updating processes
               (pull, merge, rebase, switch, reset, checkout, etc.) require
               O(N*M) pattern matches, where N is the number of patterns and
               M is the number of paths in the index. This scales poorly.
    
           •   Avoiding the scaling issue has to be done via limiting the
               number of patterns via specifying leading directory name or
               glob.
    
           •   Passing globs on the command line is error-prone as users may
               forget to quote the glob, causing the shell to expand it into
               all matching files and pass them all individually along to
               sparse-checkout set/add. While this could also be a problem
               with e.g. "git grep — *.c", mistakes with grep/log/status
               appear in the immediate output. With sparse-checkout, the
               mistake gets recorded at the time the sparse-checkout command
               is run and might not be problematic until the user later
               switches branches or rebases or merges, thus putting a delay
               between the user’s error and when they have a chance to
               catch/notice it.
    
           •   Related to the previous item, sparse-checkout has an _add_
               subcommand but no _remove_ subcommand. Even if a _remove_
               subcommand were added, undoing an accidental unquoted glob
               runs the risk of "removing too much", as it may remove entries
               that had been included before the accidental add.
    
           •   Non-cone mode uses gitignore-style patterns to select what to
               **include**(with the exception of negated patterns), while
               .gitignore files use gitignore-style patterns to select what
               to **exclude**(with the exception of negated patterns). The
               documentation on gitignore-style patterns usually does not
               talk in terms of matching or non-matching, but on what the
               user wants to "exclude". This can cause confusion for users
               trying to learn how to specify sparse-checkout patterns to get
               their desired behavior.
    
           •   Every other git subcommand that wants to provide "special path
               pattern matching" of some sort uses pathspecs, but non-cone
               mode for sparse-checkout uses gitignore patterns, which feels
               inconsistent.
    
           •   It has edge cases where the "right" behavior is unclear. Two
               examples:
    
                   First, two users are in a subdirectory, and the first runs
                      git sparse-checkout set '/toplevel-dir/*.c'
                   while the second runs
                      git sparse-checkout set relative-dir
                   Should those arguments be transliterated into
                      current/subdirectory/toplevel-dir/*.c
                   and
                      current/subdirectory/relative-dir
                   before inserting into the sparse-checkout file?  The user who typed
                   the first command is probably aware that arguments to set/add are
                   supposed to be patterns in non-cone mode, and probably would not be
                   happy with such a transliteration.  However, many gitignore-style
                   patterns are just paths, which might be what the user who typed the
                   second command was thinking, and they'd be upset if their argument
                   wasn't transliterated.
    
                   Second, what should bash-completion complete on for set/add commands
                   for non-cone users?  If it suggests paths, is it exacerbating the
                   problem above?  Also, if it suggests paths, what if the user has a
                   file or directory that begins with either a '!' or '#' or has a '*',
                   '\', '?', '[', or ']' in its name?  And if it suggests paths, will
                   it complete "/pro" to "/proc" (in the root filesystem) rather than to
                   "/progress.txt" in the current directory?  (Note that users are
                   likely to want to start paths with a leading '/' in non-cone mode,
                   for the same reason that .gitignore files often have one.)
                   Completing on files or directories might give nasty surprises in
                   all these cases.
    
           •   The excessive flexibility made other extensions essentially
               impractical.  **--sparse-index** is likely impossible in non-cone
               mode; even if it is somehow feasible, it would have been far
               more work to implement and may have been too slow in practice.
               Some ideas for adding coupling between partial clones and
               sparse checkouts are only practical with a more restricted set
               of paths as well.
    
           For all these reasons, non-cone mode is deprecated. Please switch
           to using cone mode.
    


## INTERNALS — CONE MODE HANDLING



           The "cone mode", which is the default, lets you specify only what
           directories to include. For any directory specified, all paths
           below that directory will be included, and any paths immediately
           under leading directories (including the toplevel directory) will
           also be included. Thus, if you specified the directory
           Documentation/technical/ then your sparse checkout would contain:
    
           •   all files in the toplevel-directory
    
           •   all files immediately under Documentation/
    
           •   all files at any depth under Documentation/technical/
    
           Also, in cone mode, even if no directories are specified, then the
           files in the toplevel directory will be included.
    
           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.
    
           See also the "Internals — Cone Pattern Set" section to learn how
           the directories are transformed under the hood into a subset of
           the Full Pattern Set of sparse-checkout.
    


## INTERNALS — FULL 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 sparse-checkout file uses the same syntax as **.gitignore** files;
           see gitignore(5) for details. Here, though, the patterns are
           usually being used to select which files to include rather than
           which files to exclude. (However, it can get a bit confusing since
           gitignore-style patterns have negations defined by patterns which
           begin with a _!_ , so you can also select files to _not_ include.)
    
           For example, to select everything, and then to remove the file
           **unwanted**(so that every file will appear in your working tree
           except the file named **unwanted**):
    
               git sparse-checkout set --no-cone '/*' '!unwanted'
    
           These patterns are just placed into the
           **$GIT_DIR/info/sparse-checkout** as-is, so the contents of that file
           at this point would be
    
               /*
               !unwanted
    
           See also the "Sparse Checkout" section of git-read-tree(1) to
           learn more about the gitignore-style patterns used in sparse
           checkouts.
    


## INTERNALS — CONE PATTERN SET



           In cone mode, only directories are accepted, but they are
           translated into the same gitignore-style patterns used in the full
           pattern set. We refer to the particular patterns used in those
           mode as being of one of two types:
    
            1. **Recursive:** All paths inside a directory are included.
    
            2. **Parent:** All files immediately inside a directory are included.
    
           Since cone mode always includes files at the toplevel, when
           running **git sparse-checkout set** with no directories specified, the
           toplevel directory is added as a parent pattern. At this point,
           the sparse-checkout file contains the following patterns:
    
               /*
               !/*/
    
           This says "include everything immediately under the toplevel
           directory, but nothing at any level below that."
    
           When in cone mode, the **git sparse-checkout set** subcommand takes a
           list of directories. 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.
    
           Unless **core.sparseCheckoutCone** is explicitly set to **false** , 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. If they do
           not match, git will behave as though **core.sparseCheckoutCone** was
           false, regardless of its setting.
    
           In the cone mode case, despite the fact that full patterns are
           written to the $GIT_DIR/info/sparse-checkout file, 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.
    


## INTERNALS — 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.
    


## GIT



           Part of the git(1) suite
    


* * *