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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-04T02:22:12+00:00

I’m implementing an option in my application to use –depth 1 to make a

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I’m implementing an option in my application to use --depth 1 to make a minimal functional clone of a git repo, and I’ve just realized that the dumb http transport doesn’t support --depth. I’d like to automatically detect whether an http remote is dumb or smart so I can omit the --depth option when talking to dumb http repos. Is this possible?

Alternately, is there a direct way to check whether a git remote supports --depth?

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  1. Editorial Team

    One way is by direct HTTP queries.

    Smart-supporting git clients add an argument to the end of the first URL grabbed, “[repo]/info/refs?service=git-upload-pack”. A dumb server will just send “info/refs” file as text ignoring the argument, while a smart server will return some binary data in front of the refs list, including text “service=git-upload-pack” and a list of features (which you might be able to figure out “depth” support from).

    You can script this smart/dumb test by using wget or curl to check the MIME type: text/plain (dumb) vs. application/x-git-upload-pack-advertisement (smart).

    $ curl -si http://github.com/git/git.git/info/refs?service=git-upload-pack | grep --binary-files=text '^Content-Type'
Content-Type: application/x-git-upload-pack-advertisement
$ curl -si http://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git/info/refs?service=git-upload-pack | grep --binary-files=text '^Content-Type'
Content-Type: application/x-git-upload-pack-advertisement
$ curl -si http://repo.or.cz/r/git.git/info/refs?service=git-upload-pack | grep --binary-files=text '^Content-Type'
Content-Type: text/plain

    (Pipe to grep -q "^Content-Type: application/x-git" and use the return code for true/false test.)

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