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Interesting! I didn't know about the --remote flag and this usage. I would probably have done something like:

git clone --filter=tree:0 --depth=1 --sparse --no-checkout && git checkout HEAD <desired_file>

(But that would still end up fetching a few more objects than just the desired file.)

The other comment above would probably also need to transmit a few more objects. At least if you are starting from a commit hash (instead of HEAD) and don't trust the server.

(I would assume git doesn't trust the server, and will verify that the chain of hashes works out.)

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