By default Git will copy the full history when you clone a repository. This is one of the advantages of a distributed source control system as you have the full history locally. But what if you have a project that accumulated years of project history in your repository?
The solution is a shallow clone. A shallow clone allows you to clone a repository keeping only the latest n commits of history.
How can you do this? Just use the - -depth option:
git clone --depth depth remote-url
Remark: This can also save some time on your build server. Hint, hint…