Working around unneeded subdirs with git-svn in order to save space

I've started using git-svn for an SVN-based project, so that I can make local commits.

However, the SVN repository contains a lot of directories that I don't need to work with. When I solely used SVN, I was able to partly check-out stuff with:

svn co <repos-url> --depth开发者_如何学Go empty 

and then update the needed directories:

svn up <repos-dir>/<subdir>

As far as I've understood, partly checking out a project isn't an option with Git, so I'm looking for alternative way of saving some space. Any suggestions?

Edit: what I am thinking myself is something in the lines of creating a branch thatonly contains the files I need. I'd then want to be able to push the changes to these files without pushing any removal of the files I don't need. But I am not too deply into the way Git works to figure out if this is possible?

Are the extra directories really that big? One advantage of Git is that you do most of your work from your local harddrive (you commit to your own branch, not to the server) so it's fast even when there are many files.