bug#30428: guix git-fetch doesn't specify "--depth 1" - git clone clones a lot without any use

[Danny Milosavljevic]

Hi Ludo,

On Wed, 14 Feb 2018 14:58:55 +0100
address@hidden (Ludovic Courtès) wrote:

> I think it’s a great idea.  FWIW, Andy proposed something along these
> lines, but the idea was to use shallow clones for tags only because in
> other cases it might not work (?):
> 
>   https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-08/msg00258.html

Yeah, some git servers either don't support searching by commit at all
or only support it after enabling it manually in the config file
(justification is some kind of privacy thing where accidentially a
private file could have been pushed to a public repo and then
reverted - with the commit hash you'd still get to it).
 
I'd rather not do the more involved patchset at the time being.
I don't understand git all that well.

It's already much nicer just to try the shallow commit checkout and fall back
to the current way if it doesn't work - and it's low risk.