Pulling just one directory out of a git repo

Question

I have a git repo that I want to do a pull from. I do a normal git pull with no problems. The issue is that I want just one certain directory out of the repo. My thinking was that I could use a .gitignore file with a rule like this:

#Ignore all files
/
#Except the one I want
!/temp

The problem is this doesn't work. Is that the right way to do it or is there a better way?

Answer 1

git pull fetches and merges the remote branch.

.gitignore works only locally, and will hide matching entries from showing up on git status and being added to the index with git add. It's not what you want.

What you want to do, is fetch the remote branch, and from that, extract the dir/file you need.

$ git fetch <remote> <branch>
$ git checkout <remote>/<branch> -- relative/path/to/file/or/dir

the file/dir should now be in your branch and added to the index.