Understanding Shallow Clones in Git

A shallow clone in Git is a method of copying a repository that only includes a portion of its history, unlike a deep clone which copies the entire history. It's useful for large repositories to save disk space and cloning time. Shallow clones are fast and save disk space and network bandwidth, but lack complete history; accessing older commits requires git fetch --unshallow. The command git clone --depth=n <repository_url> creates a shallow clone with depth n commits. Shallow clones are efficient for large repositories or when only specific commits/branches are needed.