Is fetching all references from the raspberrypi repo needed?

[HinTak]

I am wondering about whether it is necessary to

Fetching all references
From https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux

It is both very slow - this step alone is 2060 sec in buildroot-2018.08/output/build/build-time.log, or 35 minutes.

1624509691:start:download            : linux
1624511751:end  :download            : linux

and getting at just under 3GB too. I have converted to doing either a tag or a branch tip, which should be a lot faster and more reproducible too, particularly with a tag.

@maxnet is there any quick change to the build scripts for just fetching a tag or a branch tip without the rest, even if you don't want to incorporate such change yourself?