Re: Feedback outside of the user survey

From: Garry Dolley <gdolley@arpnetworks.com>
Date: Oct 18, 2008, 13:49 UTC
Message-ID: <20081018134906.GA13894@garry-thinkpad.arpnetworks.com>
In-Reply-To: <48F7A4F8.2080600@jaeger.mine.nu>

On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 10:32:56PM +0200, Christian Jaeger wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> Hm, I don't see a fundamental technical problem which would prevent one 
> from implementing the ability to checkout only a subdirectory into the 
> working directory (i.e. to add options to Git to make it reflect the 
> working directory as being a subdirectory of what is in Git's database). At 
> this level I don't see anything inherently different from SVN--except maybe 
> for directory renames: if someone else is renaming the directory you've 
> checked out, what should happend with your checkout? Git's filebased rename 
> tracking would just lead to everything vanishing from your checkout. I 
> don't know what happens in SVN, maybe it keeps track of the directory 
> rename and still sends you the changes of the directory you've checked out 
> even if it has now a different name on the server?
>
> Anyway, an unavoidable difference is that you have to always clone the 
> whole Git *database*. With SVN the database stays on the server, with Git 
> it is being cloned. Just as I expect SVN to need the whole database to be 
> [...]

Right, but I think cloning the entire git database just to get a subdir is a fundamental technical problem. It's no different than git-clone + checkout + rm -rf <what I don't want in working tree>

In that sense, git already has support for cloning subdirectories, which is why I don't think this method applies to what the original post author meant when they referred to "support for cloning sub directories".

:)

-- 
Garry Dolley
ARP Networks, Inc.
http://scie.nti.st
Los Angeles County REACT, Unit 336
WQGK336