git - How to Don't checkout a file or folder

Question

We have a repo. A coworker check in a folder in linux. I want to check it out in Windows. There are some filenames(e.g. ABC::DEF.3pm.gz) what Windows doesn't. It fail when I run

git pull origin

Is there a way to ignore this folder?

I've tried put this folder in .gitignore and it doesn't work as this folder's already in repo.

Its better to delete this folder from the repo than finding a way to not checkout part of the files (which I'm not sure this option exists) — chenop, Oct 17 '16 at 14:29
delete .git folder in windows and clone the proyect from repo again. — johnnymnmonic, Oct 17 '16 at 14:37

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:32

There are two possible solutions.

Sparse checkout

Sparse checkout is a Git feature which allows to checkout only specific files and directories. See examples and further discussion here.

Filter-branch

Another solution would be renaming that file across whole repository with git filter-branch as described in this answer. That would help to get rid of issue at all, however it would also rewrite commit history.

git - How to Don't checkout a file or folder

1 Answers1