Partial clone is a git feature allowing a local repository to contain only a subset of a remote repository's trees and blobs, fetching missing objects lazily. Sparse checkout is a separate git feature allowing a working tree to contain only a subset of the files tracked by the repository. Used together, partial clone and sparse checkout allow working with large multi-project repositories ("monorepos") and repositories containing large binary files without having to download and store a full copy of the data in the repository. (Shallow clone is a distinct git feature that limits the commits stored in the local repository.)
For example, consider jbosboom/test-partial-clone-sparse-checkout, which tracks a few text files and some large images. If we want to work on the text files, but don't need the images, we can avoid downloading and storing them in our local rep