Fetching a single remote branch

[imsteev]

Hi, I'm currently using this action to checkout a repo so that I can prepare a release branch. The only branch I need is the default branch, however I'm noticing in the logs that this action is pulling all remote upstream branches. This is unnecessary work

Is there a way to only fetch a single branch?

In the documentation, the ref parameter seems related, but upon closer look this only affects what branch is checked out, not fetched

    # The branch, tag or SHA to checkout. When checking out the repository that
    # triggered a workflow, this defaults to the reference or SHA for that event.
    # Otherwise, uses the default branch.
    ref: ''

Thank you!

[kenorb]

Especially problem, when other branches are big, so checkout can take forever.

[kenorb]

Refs/dup: GH-285

[duaneking]

This is not just inefficient; it is extremely wasteful, and it's a giant code smell.

Imagine that you're dealing with the chromium code base like I am and you have to wait for 33 gigs of data to be transferred because you're not able to filter down to what you need.

[rustycl0ck]

According to git command doc¹:

--depth
Create a shallow clone with a history truncated to the specified number of commits. Implies --single-branch unless --no-single-branch is given to fetch the histories near the tips of all branches. If you want to clone submodules shallowly, also pass --shallow-submodules.

And since the default value is fetch-depth: 1 in this action's parameters, the --single-branch option is implied already by default too.

Footnotes

1. https://git-scm.com/docs/git-clone#Documentation/git-clone.txt-code--depthltdepthgtcode ↩