How to browse a remote Git repository

[Joshua Beall]

Hi All,

I've been searching on this and can't figure this out. I found a post
about this here:
http://groups.google.com/group/tortoisegit-users/browse_thread/thread/8d3695c15fa0eb4d/b74f0c74817cf828?lnk=gst&q=browse#b74f0c74817cf828

But the idea mentioned there ("Browse references") seems to only show
information about repositories and branches associated with the
tracked directory.

What I want to do is inspect the contents of a remote Git repository.
So, I've got a URL to a Git repository, and I want to see what is in
it, without having to clone the whole repository down to my machine.
I may then choose to clone down a portion of the repository.

With TortoiseSVN, this is what the "browse" feature allows you to do.
What is the TortoiseGit way to do this?

-Josh

[Robert Pollak]

Hello Joshua,

the Git way of browsing a remote repository *is* to clone it. That's
because Git is so much faster than Subversion. Cloning a whole Git
repository is usually faster than checking out one single revision in
Subversion. And this does not cost disk space, since Git repositories
are extremely well compressed. Also, partial cloning is not possible
in Git, see stackoverflow.com/questions/2586824#2587244.

Best regards,
Robert

[Joshua Beall]

So if we've got an entire website under version control, and it's a gig of data, the only way to browse the Git repository is to clone the entire gig of data down to my server, even if I just went over to a designer's workstation and, say, wanted to grab a copy of  the website logos that were used 2, 4, and 7 years ago?

  -Josh 

[Joshua Beall]

I meant to say "down to my workstation" not "down to my server"

[Robert Pollak]

> So if we've got an entire website under version control, and it's a gig of
> data, the only way to browse the Git repository is to clone the entire gig

> of data down to my [workstation], even if I just went over to a designer's

> workstation and, say, wanted to grab a copy of  the website logos that were
> used 2, 4, and 7 years ago?

Git is not a backup system (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2576198).

If you want to use it nevertheless, I suggest to set up gitweb on the
server, or to access the server per remote login. Or you create a Git
submodule structure that separates the small parts (e.g. code and
icons) into an own repository.

Robert