Re: What's cooking in git.git (Nov 2008, #06; Wed, 26)

>  So "git grep -e frotz Documentation/", whether you only check out
>  Documentation or the whole tree, should grep only in Documentation area,
>  and "git grep -e frotz" should grep in the whole tree, even if you happen
>  to have a sparse checkout.  By definition, a sparse checkout has no
>  modifications outside the checkout area, so whenever grep wants to look
>  for strings outside the checkout area it should pretend as if the same
>  content as what the index records is in the work tree.  This is consistent
>  with the way how "git diff" in a sparsely checked out work tree should
>  behave.