The original wording sounded as if --depth could only be used to deepen or shorten the history of existing repos. However, that is not the case. In a workflow like $ git init $ git remote add origin https://github.com/git/git.git $ git fetch --depth=1 The newly initialized repo is properly created as a shallow repo. --- Documentation/fetch-options.txt | 9 +++++---- 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-) diff --git a/Documentation/fetch-options.txt b/Documentation/fetch-options.txt index 45583d8..78cd265 100644 --- a/Documentation/fetch-options.txt +++ b/Documentation/fetch-options.txt @@ -8,10 +8,11 @@ option old data in `.git/FETCH_HEAD` will be overwritten. --depth=<depth>:: - Deepen or shorten the history of a 'shallow' repository created by - `git clone` with `--depth=<depth>` option (see linkgit:git-clone[1]) - to the specified number of commits from the tip of each remote - branch history. Tags for the deepened commits are not fetched. + Limit fetching to the specified number of commits from the tip of + each remote branch history. If fetching to a 'shallow' repository + created by `git clone` with `--depth=<depth>` option (see + linkgit:git-clone[1]), deepen or shorten the history to the specified + number of commits. Tags for the deepened commits are not fetched. --unshallow:: If the source repository is complete, convert a shallow -- 2.7.0.windows.1 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html