Checkout part of a branch in Azure DevOps Pipelines (GetSources)

Maybe it is helpful for you to check out only a specific branch. This works by:

resources:
  repositories:
  - repository: MyGitHubRepo
    type: github
    endpoint: MyGitHubServiceConnection
    name: MyGitHubOrgOrUser/MyGitHubRepo
    ref: features/tools

steps:
- checkout: MyGitHubRepo

Or by using the inline syntax like so

- checkout: git://MyProject/MyRepo@features/tools # checks out the features/tools branch
- checkout: git://MyProject/MyRepo@refs/heads/features/tools # also checks out the features/tools branch
- checkout: git://MyProject/MyRepo@refs/tags/MyTag # checks out the commit referenced by MyTag.

More information can be found here

In Azure DevOps you don't have option to get only part of the repository, but there is a workaround: Disable the "Get sources" step and get only the source you want by manually executing the according git commands in a script.

To disable the default "Get Sources" just specify none in the checkout statement:

- checkout: none

In the pipeline add a CMD/PowerShell task to get the sources manually with one of the following 2 options:

1. Get only part of the repo with git sparse-checkout. For example, get only the directories src_1 and src_2 within the test folder (lines starting with REM ### are just the usual batch comments):

- script: |
    REM ### this will create a 'root' directory for your repo and cd into it
    mkdir myRepo
    cd myRepo
    REM ### initialize Git in the current directory
    git init
    REM ### set Git sparsecheckout to TRUE
    git config core.sparsecheckout true
    REM ### write the directories that you want to pull to the .git/info/sparse-checkout file (without the root directory)
    REM ### you can add multiple directories with multiple lines
    echo test/src_1/ >> .git/info/sparse-checkout
    echo test/src_2/ >> .git/info/sparse-checkout
    REM ### fetch the remote repo using your access token
    git remote add -f origin https://[email protected]/repo
    REM ### pull the files from the source branch of this build, using the build-in Azure DevOps variable for the branch name
    git pull origin $(Build.SourceBranch)
  displayName: 'Get only test/src_1 & test/src_2 directories instead of entire repository'

Now in the builds task make myRepo the working directory. Fetching the remote repo using an access token is necessary, since using checkout: none will prevent your login credentials from being used. In the end of the pipeline you may want to add step to clean the myRepo directory.

2. Get parts of the repo with Azure DevOps Rest API (Git - Items - Get Items Batch).