Re: [PATCH] checkout: add --sparse for restoring files in sparse checkout mode

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 25, 2013, 01:57 UTC
Message-ID: <20130325015717.GA3542@elie.Belkin>
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8ByH8U0wYuaKaMKd3bauLBbS52peMs1eiGz++2vj2JKTA@mail.gmail.com>

Duy Nguyen wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 1:17 AM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

>> Hm, should this be the default?
>>
>> In principle, I would expect
>>
>>         git checkout -- .
>>
>> to make the worktree match the index, respecting the sparse checkout.
>> And something like
>>
>>         git checkout --widen -- .
>>
>> to change the sparse checkout pattern.

[...]

> Changing the default may involve a painful transition phase (e.g. "add
> -u").

I don't think it needs to. There aren't many people using sparse checkout even these days, and I think they'd generally be happy about the change.

But if we want to be conservative until some later point (like 2.1), perhaps --sparse should be named something like --no-widen? That way, I can do

	git checkout --no-widen -- .

to make the worktree match the index, respecting the sparse checkout. And I can do

	git checkout --widen -- .

to change the sparse checkout pattern. Meanwhile the confusing command

	git checkout -- .

would be ill-defined for sparse checkouts --- in past git versions, if I understand you correctly it acted like --widen, while in some unspecified future version it may change to mean --no-widen. No need for warnings because I doubt anyone is relying on either behavior.

Would that work? Jonathan