Comment by zegerjan

Partial clone is currently support at least by both GitHub and GitLab. While still maturing, you could filter for example all large blobs for local development, or only fetch certain sub trees. See also the Git docs: https://git-scm.com/docs/partial-clone, or GitLabs docs: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/git/partial_clone.html

GitLab will continue to make investments in it for at least the next year as it's a big issue especially for gaming companies.

Full disclosure, currently a GitLab employee.