[Nix-dev] Fetching only a small part of a huge git repository

[Martijn Vermaat]

Doesn't look like anything like this has been implemented. The
fetchFromGitHub (or fetchgit actually) machinery is here:

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/tree/master/pkgs/build-support/fetchgit





2016-07-19 16:52 GMT-04:00 Michiel Leenaars <ml.software at leenaa.rs>:

> Hi all,
>
> I was wondering if there is a recommended way to retrieve only a certain
> path (or a set of paths) from a git repository as a source for a Nix
> closure? The use case is working with a repository that is huge but only a
> single
> small folder is needed (a practical example is Google fonts on Github -
> hundreds of Mb which is a bit much to store if all that is needed is a
> single font such
> as the Roboto font which is the default font of Android). fetchFromGitHub
> and fetchgit seem to always copy the entire repository.
>
> git has an option for this (git archive, [1]) which seems to do exactly
> what
> I want - a checkout of only a single folder of a larger git repository -
> and there are other options like a filter branch or a sparse-checkout.
> I've grepped nixpkgs to see if there was any usage of git archive but
> could not find it - as a user I would probably like to see something in
> fetchFromGitHub with something like:
>
>  url = fetchFromGitHub {
>    owner = "name";
>    repo = "reallyhugerepo";
>    rev = "revisionnumber";
>    paths = [ "tinypath-a" "path-b" ];
>    sha256 =
> "22bfd184608ca00e38515c8d5d01d38460a66a503c75a35d0fea3e33559bb3b6"    };
>
> That seems like a reasonable and declarative way to specify what can be
> discarded (a path in git archive can be a file or a folder with all the
> files in it btw).
>
> Probably I'm not the first to think he needs this, and perhaps such a
> thing is currently already possible? If so, I'd love any pointers ... If
> this
> is a bad or redundant idea, please also let me know ...
>
> Best,
> Michiel
>
> [1] https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-archive.html
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