Clone Subdirectory of Git Repository

prerequisites: git >= 1.7.0
original article

(0. Create Empty Repository)

$ mkdir <repo>
$ cd <repo>
$ git init
$ git remote add -f origin <url>

Replace <url> with the URL of your remote repository.

1. Do a Sparse Checkout

$ git config core.sparseCheckout true

Next, you need to include the folders and subfolders that you want to clone in .git/info/sparse-checkout file.
Replace /path/to/dir with the folder path.

$ echo "path/to/dir/" >> .git/info/sparse-checkout

2. Pull Main

$ git pull origin main

Notice: main is now the default branch of Github.

Since git 2.25.0 there is a new experimental feature of sparse-checkout. Here are some sample commands using sparse-checkout.

$ git sparse-checkout init                  # git config core.sparseCheckout true
$ git sparse-checkout set "/path/to/folder" # echo "/path/to/folder" >> .git/info/sparse-checkout
$ git sparse-checkout list                  # cat .git/info/sparse-checkout