From: David Turner Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2015 02:32:07 GMT Subject: Confused about sparse vs untracked-cache Message-ID: <1438223527.18134.53.camel@twopensource.com> I'm looking at dir.c, and there's a bit I'm confused about: prep_exclude() says: /* * .. and .gitignore does not exist before * (i.e. null exclude_sha1 and skip_worktree is * not set). Then we can skip loading .gitignore, * which would result in ENOENT anyway. * skip_worktree is taken care in read_directory() */ !is_null_sha1(untracked->exclude_sha1))) { That "skip_worktree is taken care in read_directory()" appears to be referring to this bit of validate_untracked_cache(): /* * An optimization in prep_exclude() does not play well with * CE_SKIP_WORKTREE. It's a rare case anyway, if a single * entry has that bit set, disable the whole untracked cache. */ for (i = 0; i < active_nr; i++) if (ce_skip_worktree(active_cache[i])) return NULL; ------------ I'm confused about why skip_worktree needs to be unset. When I comment out the second snippet, all the tests still pass. What was the reason behind that condition? Is it really necessary?