Comment by jayd16

How about git just fixes shallow clones and partial clones? Then we don't need convoluted work arounds to cheat in large content after we fully clone a history of pointers or promises or whatever. You should be able to set default clone depth by file type and size in the git attributes (or maybe a file that can also live above a repo like supporting attributes in .gitconfig locations?).

Then the usual settings would be to shallow clone the latest content as well as fetch the full history and maybe the text file historical content. Ideally you could prune to the clone depth settings as well.

Why are we still talking about large file pointers? If you fix shallow and partial clones, then any repo can be an efficient file mirror, right?