Re: [RFC PATCH 00/12] Sparse checkout

From: James Pickens <jepicken@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 24, 2008, 17:59 UTC
Message-ID: <loom.20080724T171151-310@post.gmane.org>
In-Reply-To: <fcaeb9bf0807240200x10a6a267h4c37e4566da967ba@mail.gmail.com>

Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy <pclouds <at> gmail.com> writes:

> This one is difficult (and may probably produce more intrusive patch).
> Let's see what I can do.

This is not a high priority for me, so if the added difficulty/intrusiveness means it would take longer for the sparse checkout capability to make it into mainline git, then I would drop this request, or at least delay it until some later time.

Show 9 quoted lines

> >  Second, I would want a capability to checkout and release directories
> >  incrementally, similar to how we do it in cvs.  For example, I might do
> >  the following in cvs:
> 
> You can do that with "git checkout --path" (non-recursive checkout aside):
> 
> $ git checkout --path=A                     # checkout full A
> $ git checkout --path=A/B1/C1               # no, limit to A/B1/C1 only
> $ git checkout --path=A/B1/C1:A/B2          # extend to A/B2 too

My point was not that incremental checkout is impossible, just that it would be easier if I didn't have to re-type the full path list again. Suppose I had 9 directories (A/B1 through A/B9) in my sparse checkout, and I wanted to add a 10th directory (A/B10). It would be much easier to type something like

$ cd A $ git checkout B10

instead of

$ git checkout --path=A/B1:A/B2:A/B3:A/B4:A/B5:A/B6:A/B7:A/B8:A/B9:A/B10

Another thing I thought of, which I'm not sure if it's sensible or not, is to make sparse checkout a persistent branch attribute by creating a .gitpaths (or whatever) file containing a list of directories that should be checked out. This would be analogous to the .gitmodules file. The .gitpaths file could then be checked in, and applied automatically any time the user checks out a branch containing such file. This is just an idea for discussion, not a feature request.

James