Re: on subtree checkout

From: Robin Rosenberg <robin.rosenberg.lists@dewire.com>
Date: Feb 24, 2008, 17:22 UTC
Message-ID: <200802241822.42594.robin.rosenberg.lists@dewire.com>
In-Reply-To: <vpqve4efiql.fsf@bauges.imag.fr>

söndagen den 24 februari 2008 skrev Matthieu Moy:

> I suppose you have to forbid merges where anything non-trivial happens
> outside the tree (i.e. allow it only if the set of renamed or changed
> files is disjoint outside the tree, or only if only one of the
> branches to merge have changes outside the tree).

One still has to allow it, maybe forcing a bigger checkout in those cases.

> That's probably not such a big limitation in practice for the user,
> since by definition the user won't modify the files outside its tree,
> so he can at least still merge with the branch he branched from.

Partial checkout is for convenience and speed of worktree operations as I see it. Other people could have other reasons for it. Branch switching takes a lot of time with big repos, same thing with git status, add -u etc. Restricting the worktree scan for uninteresting parts speeds things up.

> I can see another problem: partial checkout is really interesting only
> if you can do a partial clone ("partial" here in the sense "subtree").
> Otherwise, your .git/ still eats your disk space and "clone" still
> needs your bandwidth for something you won't use.

Better and more of "global" operations on repos with submodules might make them more bearable, and maybe even convenient, for example doing a git diff over a set of submodules detecting renames between submodules.

-- robin