[Question] Clone download specify a sub directory

[tamnguyenhuy]

For instance, I have a repo with a structure as follows:

release-repo │ release │ release 2 │ release 3 └───sub-release 3.1 └───sub-release 3.2

Could I download a subfolder release 2 instead of the whole repo? I meant could we only download a sub directory or a file?

[alexvasilkov]

Did you try projectPath param as described in the README? Seems like it's exactly what you're looking for.

[tamnguyenhuy]

I've tried with projectPath

git {
    implementation '<git-repo-link>', {
        name 'demo'
        tag 'v1.0.4'
        projectPath '/release2'
    }
}

It will clone the whole project and select release2 as a Gradle module. Correct me if I'm wrong! If I am correct, Can we determine to specify a file or a directory before downloading by creating a new param/function? Or can we clone the whole repo to the temp folder and then will delete unnecessary file/folders, finally we only put a specify resource that we need?

[alexvasilkov]

Yes, it will clone entire repo and will add the subfolder defined in projectPath as gradle module. It can be optimized a little using sparse checkout but I didn't plan to implement it, and I didn't even check if JGit library I'm using can handle it.

You can probably do a manual clean up in afterEvaluate callback or similar. I'm not sure why though, do you have a big repo and want to reduce local disk usage?

[tamnguyenhuy]

Yes, I have a big repo. Many thanks @alexvasilkov for explaining, I will remove useless resources manually after that