The "fetch-depth" value purpose

[aleks-ivanov]

Hi!

I was wondering, what is the purpose of setting exactly 50 to the checkout fetch-depth ?

Would lower or higher value be detrimental in any way ?

[munderseth]

Hi @AleksIvanovSinglet,

We use the fetch-depth to collect the commits used for the Code Change metric suite and associated graph within the Metrics tab. Most other CIs default the fetch-depth to 50 (i.e., Circle CI, Azure, Travis, etc.). GitHub decided to default their depth to 1. We are not sure exactly why GitHub defaulted to 1. It is our belief there is no real performance difference with different fetch depths.

Note that we are making changes in a future release to collect the Code Change independent of the setting.