Usually `git clone --depth 1 URL` works, then you can incrementally deepen it. This does cause extra load on the servers, but if it's that big a problem for th

Usually `git clone --depth 1 URL` works, then you can incrementally deepen it. This does cause extra load on the servers, but if it's that big a problem for them, they can write the incremental patches themselves. (I suspect that the "dumb http" transport are also incremental if you squint hard enough at them, but I've never had reason to investigate that closely)