Purpose of clone

Rename the repository, so that binary in $GOPATH/bin will be go-get-shallow-git instead of git. I wanted to add this workarround permanently using ~/.bashrc hack without polluting gobal git command.

How to use shallow clones for go get

This is a little hack to use shallow clones for new git checkouts with go get. Unfortunately for Gophers, this has been an open issue for three years counting without a workable solution aside from patching the go toolchain yourself. This solution utilizes a git wrapper that determines if a pull/clone is happening and then makes sure it is shallow.

To install it you do

$ go get github.com/arunmj/go-get-shallow-git

add a symlink $GOPATH/bin/go-get-shallow-git to a location not covered in $PATH

replace with convinient directory path

$ ln -s $GOPATH/bin/go-get-shallow-git <TARGETDIR>/git

The git-wrapper tool is symlinked to "git" in <TARGETDIR>, so that you can add an alias to go command with prepended to the PATH and then the git-wrapper will be substituted for the real git (/usr/bin/git).

$ alias go="PATH=<TARGETDIR>:\$PATH go" 

OR use go_get instead of go get

$ alias go_get="PATH=<TARGETDIR>:\$PATH go get" 

which you can add to your .bashrc files if you want it to be permanent. This way, the wrapper will aways be used and the wrapper will force cloning to be shallow.

Benchmarks

Here's a benchmark showing a 50% reduction in disk usage and thus a 50% reduction in time taken for a go get. You'll not get that much for smaller repositories, but its not bad.

normal go get

% docker run -it golang:1.10 /bin/bash
root@d9208178f1fa:/go# time go get github.com/juju/juju/...
real    7m35.631s
user    1m40.059s
sys     0m45.436s
root@d9208178f1fa:/go# du -sh .
1.1G

shallow go get

% docker run -it golang:1.10 /bin/bash
root@68135fb64a3e:/go# go get github.com/schollz/git
root@68135fb64a3e:/go# export PATH=$GOPATH/bin:$PATH
root@68135fb64a3e:/go# time go get github.com/juju/juju/...
real    3m0.335s
user    0m29.192s
sys     0m17.253s
root@d9208178f1fa:/go# du -sh .
499M    .

Acknowledgements

Thanks tscholl2 for the idea.

Thanks schollz for the code

License

MIT