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Add support for reference repository parameter
Git clone command added support for a local reference repository in order to minimize the network traffic and load on the git servers for big repositories. Adding support to specify such reference git repository in the checkout action.
The is very useful in big repositories hosted in GitHub Enterprise deployments that runs massive scales of CI jobs across distributed geographies.
Tested manually in my private GitHub Enterprise instances, but I lack the knowledge to create a unit test for this. Sharing to upstream so it can be taken from here, or pulled by other people needing it (see #22 and #687)
does this work for git lfs?
I believe it does. We use --reference with our own processes (not this action) and it's a big performance improvement and offloads work from the server and WAN links.
Bumping this PR. It would greatly benefit certain monorepo workflows.
We have implemented an Action internally to support reference clones that essentially has to reimplement the portions of actions/checkout we care about; it would be nice for this to just be a built in feature.
