Re: Git 1.7.6: Sparse checkouts do not work with directory exclusions

From: Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 20, 2011, 10:09 UTC
Message-ID: <CACsJy8CDtswtPJVt-T911_1y0WqShonvcCbXhFtWu2zjEqLa4A@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <4E77BC36.7060005@workspacewhiz.com>

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 8:03 AM, Joshua Jensen <jjensen@workspacewhiz.com> wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> Sometime after Git 1.7.3.2, sparse checkouts stopped working for me.  My
> sparse-checkout file looks something like:
>
> *
> !DirA/
> !DirB/
> DirC/
>
> I have restored some lines of code that were removed in November 2010.  This
> resolves the sparse checkout issue for me, but my guess is the solution is
> not implemented properly.
>
> Can anyone confirm the issue

Confirmed. It got me wonder why the negated pattern tests did not catch this. Turns out this works:

/* !DirA/ !DirB/ DirC

This is my theory why yours does not work: negated patterns !DirA and !DirB excludes both directories, but git still descends in them because you may have other patterns that re-include parts of DirA/DirB, for example:

DirA/DirD !DirA

When it's in DirA/DirB, "*" tells git to match everything (equivalent "DirA/*" and "DirB/*"), so it matches all entries in DirA/DirB again, essentially reverting "!DirA" and "!DirB" effects.

By using "/*" instead of "*", we tell git to just match entries at top level, not all levels.

I think it makes sense, but it's a bit tricky.

> and describe why those lines were removed?

Quotes from 9e08273: "The commit provided a workaround for matching directories in index. But it is no longer needed."

-- 
Duy