Quickly clone a large git repo

We usually do this:

git clone <url>

Works most of the time, except when you have a 1GB repo with lots of old branches.

You should instead do this:

git clone -b <branch> <url> --depth=1

This retrieves just the latest commit for the specific branch you specify.

You can also use the depth directive when pulling a branch:

git pull --rebase origin <branch> --depth=1