RE: [PATCH/RFC] sparse-checkout: take care of "--end-of-options" in set/add

[<rsbecker@nexbridge.com>]

On Saturday, December 23, 2023 5:02 AM, Peff wrote:
>On Thu, Dec 21, 2023 at 02:04:56PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
>> > Right, that is the "gotcha" I mentioned in my other email. Though
>> > that is the way it has behaved historically, my argument is that
>> > users are unreasonable to expect it to work:
>> >
>> >   1. It is not consistent with the rest of Git commands.
>> >
>> >   2. It is inconsistent with respect to existing options (and is an
>> >      accident waiting to happen when new options are added).
>> >
>> > So I'd consider it a bug-fix.
>>
>> So the counter-proposal here is just to drop KEEP_UNKNOWN_OPT and
>> deliberately break them^W^W^Wrealign their expectations?
>
>Yes. :) But keep in mind we are un-breaking other people, like those who
>typo:
>
>  git sparse-checkout --sikp-checks

I don't see why 

git sparse-checkout -- --sikp-checks

would be the only way to get that typo into a garbage entry, to be consistent with other commands. Without the --, --sikp-checks should result in an error.

>and don't see an error (instead, we make a garbage entry in the sparse checkout
>file).
>
>> I do not have much stake in sparse-checkout, so I am fine with that
>> direction.  But I suspect other folks on the list would have users of
>> their own who would rather loudly complain to them if we broke them
>> ;-)
>
>Likewise, I have never used sparse-checkout myself, and I don't care _that_ much.
>My interest is mostly in having various Git commands behave consistently. This
>whole discussion started because the centralized --end-of-options fix interacted
>badly with this unusual behavior.

I use sparse-checkout every day and do depend on it working predictably (although I would take a fix to see it work as above, with the -- path separator), so personally, I care about this a whole lot -- in terms of consistency.