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

Just to clarify some of the great answers here, the steps outlined in many of the answers assume that you already have a remote repository somewhere.

Given: an existing git repository, e.g. git@github.com:some-user/full-repo.git, with one or more directories that you wish to pull independently of the rest of the repo, e.g. directories named app1 and app2

Assuming you have a git repository as the above...

Then: you can run steps like the following to pull only specific directories from that larger repo:

mkdir app1
cd app1
git init
git remote add origin git@github.com:some-user/full-repo.git
git config core.sparsecheckout true
echo "app1/" >> .git/info/sparse-checkout
git pull origin master

I mistakenly thought that the sparse-checkout options had to be set on the original repository: this is not the case. You define which directories you want locally, prior to pulling from the remote. Hope this clarification helps someone else.