Git - List files recursively by branch/tag name

Question

I want to see file trees without cloning all remote files. Is it possible using git commands?

git version 2.21.0

My current commands are below:

- mkdir my-repo && cd my-repo
- git init
- git remote add origin https://remote-repo-url 
- git fetch
- git checkout origin/master -- '*.html'

How can I get only .html files as fast as I can? My repo is really huge. I need only .html files.

Answer 1

For the existing my-repo, you could try sparse checkout.

echo '*.html' > .git/info/sparse-checkout
git -c core.sparsecheckout=true checkout origin/master

Only html files and their parent folders will be left and the others will be hidden.

If you need to do it from scratch, use git fetch --depth 1 to minimize the cost of time and network.

If it's a routine task from scratch, you can make a mirror clone in advance to save time and space for future tasks.

git clone --mirror https://remote-repo-url -- /path/to/mirror

And for the routine task,

git clone https://remote-repo-url --reference-if-able /path/to/mirror --depth 1 -- my-repo
cd my-repo
echo '*.html' > .git/info/sparse-checkout
git -c core.sparsecheckout=true checkout origin/master