A script to shallow clone a repository up to the most recent version tag, or a specified tag/ref.

shallow-clone

#!/bin/sh
# usage: shallow-clone <url> [ref]
url=$1
ref=$2
repo=$(basename "$url" .git)
head=$(git ls-remote "$url" HEAD | tail -n1 | cut -f1)
if [ ! "$head" ]; then exit 1; fi
if [ "$ref" ]; then
	id=$(git ls-remote "$url" "$ref" "$ref^{}" | tail -n1 | cut -f1)
else
	tr=$(git -c 'versionsort.suffix=-' \
		ls-remote -t --sort="v:refname" "$url" | tail -n2)
	ref=$(echo "$tr" | head -n1 | cut -f2)
	id=$(echo "$tr" | tail -n1 | cut -f1)
fi
if [ ! "$id" ]; then
	echo "`basename $0`: ref does not exist" >&2
	exit 1
fi
if [ "$head" = "$id" ]; then
	git clone --depth=1 "$url"
else
	git clone --shallow-exclude="$ref" "$url" && (
		cd "$repo" && git fetch --deepen=1
	)
fi