RE: Sparse Checkout Trouble (2.5.0)

From: JunkYardMail1 <junkyardmail1@frontier.com>
Date: Jan 22, 2020, 02:06 UTC
Message-ID: <062f01d5d0c8$9ec6c140$dc5443c0$@Frontier.com>
In-Reply-To: <d4056731-c13b-c89d-dfd2-e6235e29fed6@gmail.com>

Yes.  Using git for Windows with bash terminal and Git Extensions GUI.

The reason for the sparse checkout pattern is that the repo is very large, approximately a gigabyte, and I only need of few sub-directories that amount to only about 60 megabytes. The first sparse checkout rule "!/*/" is expected to exclude everything. The second sparse checkout rule "/*/directory-*/" is expected to include only sub-directories that contain "directory-" as the leading part of a directory element.

Looks like you're able to reproduce the issue and are hot on the trail.  Thanks.

-----Original Message-----
From: Derrick Stolee [mailto:stolee@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2020 5:19 PM
To: JunkYardMail1 <JunkYardMail1@Frontier.com>; git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Sparse Checkout Trouble (2.5.0)

On 1/21/2020 7:42 PM, JunkYardMail1 wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> I have a shallow repository clone and using sparse-checkout of just a 
> handful of directories.  When I upgraded from git version 2.24.1 to 
> 2.25.0 some files not in the sparse-checkout were staged to be 
> deleted.  The directory path of these files contain the Windows reserved name of "prn".
> Ex: "japanese/prn/. . ."  Unable to un-stage these files and reset the 
> changes.

Are you using Git for Windows? I'm not sure why the "prn" would be important otherwise.

> !/*/
> /*/directory-*/

I don't see anything complicated with these patterns, although they seem a bit strange. Why would you not want anything in a directory except one named "<something>/directory-<anotherthing>/"? Is this actually the exact pattern set?

> Reverting back to the previous version (2.24.1) allowed to un-stage 
> the files and reset the changes.

This is definitely pointing to a regression, and the feature did get a bit of an overhaul. The goal was to not change how existing users interacted with it, though, so this is a bit alarming.

I did find a behavior change related to these paths in Git for Windows 2.25.0 versus 2.24.1:

  $ git clone https://github.com/derrickstolee/git-sparse-checkout-test
  Cloning into 'git-sparse-checkout-test'...
  remote: Enumerating objects: 6, done.
  remote: Counting objects: 100% (6/6), done.
  remote: Compressing objects: 100% (4/4), done.
  remote: Total 6 (delta 0), reused 6 (delta 0), pack-reused 0
  Receiving objects: 100% (6/6), done.
  error: invalid path 'directory-1/prn/a'
  fatal: unable to checkout working tree
  warning: Clone succeeded, but checkout failed.
  You can inspect what was checked out with 'git status'
  and retry with 'git restore --source=HEAD :/'
  
The checkout here is _expected_ to fail, due to the protected filenames. What is troublesome is the following sparse-checkout commands fail, and the read-tree command fails in a way that
2.24.1 does not:
 
  $ git sparse-checkout init
  error: invalid path 'directory-1/prn/a'
  error: invalid path 'directory-1/prn/a'
  
  $ git sparse-checkout set "/*" "\!/*/"
  error: invalid path 'directory-1/prn/a'
  error: invalid path 'directory-1/prn/a'
  
  $ git read-tree -mu HEAD
  error: invalid path 'directory-1/prn/a'

The double error messages are due to the "try with an in-memory pattern set, then roll back if there is a failure." The patterns we are trying to create do not include the directory that is failing.

I'll keep looking into this.

Thanks, -Stolee