Re: [QUESTION] Selective fetch possible?

["Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org>]

Rogan Dawes <lists@dawes.za.net> wrote:
> Jakub Narebski wrote:
> >"Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org> writes:
> >
> >>Filippo Zangheri <filippo.zangheri@yahoo.it> wrote:
> >>>Is it possible to git-fetch only a portion of the tree
> >>>of the specified repository, say, fetch only one directory or a
> >>>subset of files matching some regular expression?
> 
> >The problem is twofold, as far as I understand it.  First, what to do
> >if there is merge conflicts outside checked out (selected) directory?
> 
> This is something that has been repeated many times, and I fail to see 
> how it can be an issue. How can there be a conflict in a directory that 
> is not, and never has been, checked out, and therefore cannot have been 
> modified?

Given two branches:

	code
	docs

and the code people checkout the "src/" subdirectory and the docs
people checkout the "Documentation/" subdirectory, and they *only*
every work in that subdirectory, things are fine.

Until one day some developer also checks out "Documentation/" and
fixes something in the documentation as part of the same commit
that makes a code change.  The push this to the code branch.

Someday in the future a documentation writer merges the code branch
over to the docs branch, "just keeping it current".

Now there arises a possiblity of a merge conflict in a part of the
tree that you do not have checked out.


If you want to say "don't ever modify stuff outside of your branch's
purpose" then why aren't you just using submodules (one for docs and
one for code) and using a supermodule to tie everything together into
a "release package"?

> >Second, how to make repository contain only relevant objects: git in
> >many places assumes full connectivity, and that if it has an object it
> >hass all objects depending on it.
> >
> 
> Yes, this is the big problem as I see it.

This is easy enough that if the above problem could be resolved
sufficiently to the git gurus' satisfaction you would be able
to get some advice on how to solve it.  Its not difficult, just
damn annoying.  We already do it (to some extent) with grafts and
shallow clones.

-- 
Shawn.