Git: How do I clone a subdirectory only of a Git repository?

Question

I have my Git repository which, at the root, has two sub directories:

/finisht
/static

When this was in SVN, /finisht was chec

Answer 1

You can combine the sparse checkout and the shallow clone features. The shallow clone cuts off the history and the sparse checkout only pulls the files matching your patterns.

git init 
cd 
git remote add origin 
git config core.sparsecheckout true
echo "finisht/*" >> .git/info/sparse-checkout
git pull --depth=1 origin master

You'll need minimum git 1.9 for this to work. Tested it myself only with 2.2.0 and 2.2.2.

This way you'll be still able to push, which is not possible with git archive.