Some projects do not need to checkout the entire workspace as they only use a portion of the workspace. For example, when accessing a large remote repository to build a sub-module.

If you specify a sub-path "best-effort" will be made to ensure that only that sub-path is populated. Best-effort means that at least the files within the sub-path will be fetched, but side-effects may result in files from other paths being fetched as well: