Re: [RFC PATCH 00/12] Sparse checkout

[Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 24 Jul 2008, Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy wrote:
> On 7/24/08, Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >  Second, I think you can simply special case .git* files (.gitignore,
> >  .gitattributes, .gitmodules), and always check them out for all
> >  intermediate directories (unless configured otherwise, of course).
> >  So for example if you have the following directory structure:
> >
> >   A/.gitignore
> >   A/a
> >   A/B1/.gitignore
> >   A/B1/b
> >   A/B2/.gitignore
> >   A/B2/c
> >
> >  and you are checking out only subdirectory 'B1' (and all files in it;
> >  if subdirectories are checked out recursively it depends on
> >  configuration), and if for example there is .gitignore in every
> >  directory, then checked out tree would look like this:
> >
> >   A/.gitignore
> >   A/B1/.gitignore
> >   A/B1/b
> >
> >  The ability to do this is one of advantages of 'sparse' checkout over
> >  'subtree' checkout.
> 
> Or teach git to use index version of those files. Or collect all those
> files, combine them and put the result to .git/info/exclude (and
> similar places). Anyway well organized repos won't have this problem.
> 
> Checking some files out as read-only (like this case) may be
> interesting. Though I do not how much complicated it can be.

I think teaching git to use index version of .git* files (.gitignore,
.gitattributes, .gitmodules) would be much more work than adding
default rule that .git* files in leading directories are by default
checked out, just like leading directories are checked out.  This
would limit modifying git code, I think, and chances for errors.

Having "leading" directories and files read-only would be a good idea,
I think.

I don't understand the sentence "well organized repos won't have this
problem". I think well organized repos _would_ have this problem,
because of maintained and distributed top-level .gitignore and
.gitattributes.

P.S. I hope that 'sparse checkout' feature would be ready for 1.7.0
-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland