There is no practical difference. Yes, you clone and have the whole repository on the disk, but after a sparse checkout you only have to deal with the files you

There is no practical difference. Yes, you clone and have the whole repository on the disk, but after a sparse checkout you only have to deal with the files you are interested in. The only problem can be with Facebook-sized repositories, but I believe in modularizing that big of a system instead of storing everything in one vast repository.