How does this compare to partial clones and sparse-checkout? This question was raised as an issue in the project but was closed as "not really an issue", which I guess is true.
Generally, Github Issues are used as a bug tracker, not a community FAQ. Asking a maintainer to compare and contrast their project with another project or git feature seems a bit demanding.
Keyword: generally. Plenty of projects do allow community questions, specially small ones or early stages. Is there anywhere else to ask that question? If there is, it isn't prominently signified, answering at least "ask this >here<" would be common sense. At a minimum, this issue evidences the need of documentation and should be addressed in some way with more than "I don't have to answer this".
https://github.com/esrlabs/josh/issues/23