Setting Up the Repository

Create a new Gitlab Personal Access Token named after the host on which it will be used. It should have the scopes read_api, read_user, read_repository, and, optionally, write_repository if the host will be pushing commits back to the origin. Development hosts should have the write_repository permission. Note the token name and token key for step 6.
mkdir ~/homelab ~/data && cd ~/homelab Create the ~/homelab and ~/data directories. This should be under the admin user's home directory, or equivalent. It should not be owned by root.
git init Initialize the git repo. It should be empty at this point. We must init the repo empty in order to configure sparse checkout.
git config core.sparseCheckout true && git config core.fileMode false && git config pull.ff only && git config init.defaultBranch main Configure the repo to use sparse checkout and ignore file mode changes. Also configure default branch and pull behavior.
(Optional) echo "$HOSTNAME/" > .git/info/sparse-checkout Configure the repo to checkout only the files relevant to the host (e.g. fighter). Development hosts should not use this.
git remote add -f origin https://<token name>:<token key>@gitlab.jafner.net/Jafner/homelab.git Add the origin with authentication via personal access token and fetch. Remember to replace the placeholder token name and token key with the values from step 1.
git checkout main Checkout the main branch to fetch the latest files.

Disabling Sparse Checkout

To disable sparse checkout, simply run git sparse-checkout disable. With this, it can also be re-eneabled with git sparse-checkout init. You can use these two commands to toggle sparse checkout. Per: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36190800/how-to-disable-sparse-checkout-after-enabled