Is it possible to do a sparse checkout without checking out the whole repository first?

Question

I\'m working with a repository with a very large number of files that takes hours to checkout. I\'m looking into the possibility of whether Git would work well with this kin

Answer 1

Updated answer 2020:

There is now a command git sparse-checkout, that I present in detail with Git 2.25 (Q1 2020)

nicono's answer illustrates its usage:

git sparse-checkout init --cone # to fetch only root files
git sparse-checkout add apps/my_app
git sparse-checkout add libs/my_lib

It has evolved with Git 2.27 and knows how to "reapply" a sparse checkout, as in here.
Note that with Git 2.28, git status will mention that you are in a sparse-checked-out repository

Original answer: 2016

git 2.9 (June 2016) will generalize the --no-checkout option to git worktree add (the command which allows to works with multiple working trees for one repo)

See commit ef2a0ac (29 Mar 2016) by Ray Zhang (OneRaynyDay).
Helped-by: Eric Sunshine (sunshineco), and Junio C Hamano (gitster).
^{(Merged by Junio C Hamano -- gitster -- in commit 0d8683c, 13 Apr 2016)}

The git worktree man page now includes:

--[no-]checkout:

By default, add checks out , however, --no-checkout can be used to suppress checkout in order to make customizations, such as configuring sparse-checkout.