diff --git a/doc/makepkg.8.asciidoc b/doc/makepkg.8.asciidoc
index 38032e7b..d023b038 100644
--- a/doc/makepkg.8.asciidoc
+++ b/doc/makepkg.8.asciidoc
@@ -287,6 +287,10 @@ Environment Variables
 **BUILDTOOLVER=**"<version>"::
 	The version of the '$BUILDTOOL' used.
 
+**GITFLAGS**::
+	The options to pass when checking out git sources, replacing the default
+        "--mirror".
+
 Configuration
 -------------
 See linkman:makepkg.conf[5] for more details on configuring makepkg using the
diff --git a/scripts/libmakepkg/source/git.sh.in b/scripts/libmakepkg/source/git.sh.in
index bcff958d..f809cc9e 100644
--- a/scripts/libmakepkg/source/git.sh.in
+++ b/scripts/libmakepkg/source/git.sh.in
@@ -46,9 +46,12 @@ download_git() {
 	url=${url%%#*}
 	url=${url%%\?*}
 
+	# Allow overriding of options passed to git clone command, e.g. --filter=blob:none for partial cloning of big repos
+	local gitflags=${GITFLAGS:---mirror}
+
 	if [[ ! -d "$dir" ]] || dir_is_empty "$dir" ; then
 		msg2 "$(gettext "Cloning %s %s repo...")" "${repo}" "git"
-		if ! git clone --mirror "$url" "$dir"; then
+		if ! git clone $GITFLAGS "$url" "$dir"; then
 			error "$(gettext "Failure while downloading %s %s repo")" "${repo}" "git"
 			plainerr "$(gettext "Aborting...")"
 			exit 1