On Windows git: “error: Sparse checkout leaves no entry on the working directory”

Question

I had the error:

“error: Sparse checkout leaves no entry on the working directory”

when trying to set up a sparse checkout in git on windows. I've answered my own question after researching the issue and finding the full answer spread out across the web.

Answer 1

tl;dr

From the folder in which you want the source to live, using a git-bash prompt NOT powershell (although see my edit below):

git clone –n <repo> <local-directory-name>
cd <local-directory-name>
git config core.sparsecheckout true
echo some/sub-folder/you/want >> .git/info/sparse-checkout
git checkout <branch-name>

Full explanation

Sparse checkouts enable you to work on a subset of the repository. It’s worth the effort to set up sparse checkouts on large repositories, everything is much faster!

I struggled with setting it up on windows getting a lot of “error: Sparse checkout leaves no entry on the working directory”. After a bit of research, I found the following steps were minimal and had consistently good results for me – YMMV.

The most important point is this – DO NOT USE POWERSHELL/CMD FOR THESE STEPS – use a git bash prompt. This is because otherwise the echo command produces a UNICODE file with a BOM marker. The file MUST be an ANSI formatted file with UNIX style line endings for git to parse it correctly. This is the most likely cause of “error: Sparse checkout leaves no entry on the working directory” errors.

1. From a parent of the directory you wish to be the root folder, assuming a folder name of “src” do the following, This grabs the whole repo (which is still required), but does importantly does not perform a checkout, and correctly sets up the origin remote and branch tracking.

   git clone –n <your repository> src
   

2. You should have a fairly empty looking src folder (it will have the .git hidden folder). Now run the following. This updates the local git config to turn on sparse checkouts, and creates a file in the .git/info hidden folder that will list all the folders you want to include when doing a sparse checkout. This can be edited later to add other folders. Important: Be sure to use a git bash prompt for the below, and use an editor supporting unix line-ending conventions and save as ANSI when editing the sparse-checkout file, or you may get “error: Sparse checkout leaves no entry on the working directory” errors. The <path you want to checkout> might look like this: path/to/subfolder - note the lack of leading and trailing path separators.

   cd src
   git config core.sparsecheckout true
   echo <path you want to checkout> >> .git/info/sparse-checkout
   

3. Now you are ready to checkout. This should leave just the sparse-checkout folders populated. If it doesn’t, carefully check your spelling of everything above!

   git checkout <branch-name>
   

Edit - Echo in Powershell

I recently discovered that echo in powershell is a synomym for write-output. It's possible to get ASCII output by piping the echo to the out-file command which allows you to specify an encoding. So this will work from Powershell and give the correct file contents:

echo some/sub/folder/you/want | out-file -encoding ascii .git/info/sparse-checkout

Answer 2

The marked answer is correct, but you do not need to use "git bash" on Windows. It is easy to do the same in PowerShell:

Set-Content .git\info\sparse-checkout "some/sub-folder/you/want/*" -Encoding Ascii

This will create a file in ANSI encoding (obviously), but with CR LF (Windows) line endings. That seemed to be no problem for git though, it worked fine and did a sparse checkout.

Tested on Windows Server 2012.