Reduce Depth of an Existing Git Repo ⚓️

git pull --depth works on an existing repo to set the depth of references retrieved. To quote the --depth docs:

Limit fetching to the specified number of commits from the tip of each remote branch history.

So, what happens when you run this? Here's me experimenting with the Elixir repo:

$ git clone https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir.git
$ cd elixir
$ git log --oneline | wc -l
   15670 # 15670 entries!
$ git pull --depth=1
# ...pulling the shallow repo
$ git log --oneline | wc -l
   1 # 15670 to 1... woah!
$ git log
# ...output from just one commit

Is .git/ a lot smaller now? Not yet, because there are many dangling references. This Stack Overflow answer shows you how to cleanup that directory. After setting a depth of one and following its instructions, I reduced the Elixir repo's .git/ size by 90%.

Check out man git-pull for more information.

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