In GEOSldas, use only a sparse checkout of GEOS_Util?

[gmao-rreichle]

@weiyuan-jiang : When running GEOSldas parallel_build.csh, mepo init tends to take a long time when it is getting the external GEOS_Util repo. The latter consists of >1,000 files, and we probably only need a handful (pre/remap_restart/*). For reference, the entire GEOSldas (incl external repos) consists of ~4,000 files.
I might have miscounted, and I might be missing something else we need from GEOS_Util besides remap_restart.py. But it's worth a try to see if we can do a sparse checkout for GEOS_Util. When you get a chance, can you please take a look? Thanks!

cc: @biljanaorescanin

[weiyuan-jiang]

After we have tag from GEOS_Uti, this PR can have sparse checkout of GEOS_Util.
Do we need sparse checkout of GMAO_Share? @gmao-rreichle

[gmao-rreichle]

Do we need sparse checkout of GMAO_Share? @gmao-rreichle

Maybe. I didn't look into the size of what we need relative to the total size of GMAO_Shared. Something to look into. Maybe just run mepo intialize and see if any repo other than GEOS_Util slows things down

[gmao-rreichle]

addressed in #711