Re: partial checkouts

[Johan Herland <johan@herland.net>]

On Saturday 23 May 2009, Chani wrote:
> [...]
>
> right now all I've thought of is one ugly hack: have a server that checks
> out all the kde git repos, pulls daily, copies all the doc/ folders into
> a documentation folder, and offers that folder up on the interwebs so
> that update_xml can rsync from it or download a tgz of it or something.
> there appear to be lots of images in the documentation, so it's not a
> small download - 200mb and growing. it still hasn't finished downloading
> all the externals...

Do you need the doc/ folders from _all_ kde git repos, or just from those 
repos that you have currently checked out? In the latter case, you could 
solve this by adding symlinks to all the doc/ folders inside the 
documentation/ folder, and then make sure the software that traverse the 
documentation/ folder recognize and skips symlinks. Of course, this won't 
work if the translations project need _all_ doc/ folders accessible, but not 
all the kde git repos.

> I'm kinda wondering if there'd be a way to use git-filter-branch to make
> a repo that only tracks the doc/ folder for a module - but I've no idea
> whether it'd have to be recreated from scratch every time someone changes
> something in the real repo's doc/
>
> can anyone think of a less ugly solution?
> what are the chances of git supporting this kind of partial checkout
> someday?

Check out git-subtree. It can split out a subdirectory into its own repo, 
and re-integrate it back into the "parent" repo at a later date. git-subtree 
has been posted as a patch to this list a couple of times without much 
response, but it looks like an interesting alternative to submodules:
http://alumnit.ca/~apenwarr/log/?m=200904#30

If a lot of people find git-subtree useful, who knows, it might be included 
in a future git version.


Have fun! :)

...Johan

-- 
Johan Herland, <johan@herland.net>
www.herland.net