Re: [GSOC PATCH v6 0/3] environment: remove sparse-checkout related global variables

[Ayush Chandekar <ayu.chandekar@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2025 at 5:50 PM Derrick Stolee <stolee@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/10/25 11:36 AM, Ayush Chandekar wrote:
> > Just an update, I'm still working on this patch series.
>
> Hi Ayush. Do you have an update on your progress? Perhaps there
> is something you're stuck on and could use some help?
>

Hi Derrick, thanks for checking in!
I have made a few branches by trying out different ways: [1],[2] & [3]
I am quite close to sending the patch series now.

> A few weeks ago, I played around with the ideas around updating
> the location of these globals into the repository struct and
> made this critical observation:
>
>    It's "easy" to move the global into the_repository, but it
>    becomes harder (and changes behavior) if we start referring
>    to the data in each repository struct.
>
> It may be good to separate the two things into different steps:
>
>   1. Move the globals into the repository struct, but only set
>      or read from the_repository->sparse_checkout[_cone].
>
>   2. Replace the use of the_repository and instead refer to a
>      specific repo. This may change behavior of the feature in
>      the presence of submodules with different config than the
>      root repo (tests before and after will be necessary).
>      We'll also need to update the_repository during the very
>      early config parsing but then update other repos during
>      repo initialization.
>
> Does this make sense based on your progress in this space?
>

Yes, I was able to do the first step, the second step means that I
have to pass the repo struct to quite a few functions.

> Thanks,
> -Stolee
>

Thanks!
Ayush:)

[1]: https://github.com/ayu-ch/git/commits/sparse-checkout-6 (Stored
the variables in the 'struct repository' as int, and made a function
to read their values from the config)

[2]: https://github.com/ayu-ch/git/commits/sparse-checkout-7
(Christian suggested me that I can also store them as booleans so I
tried it.)

[3]: https://github.com/ayu-ch/git/commits/sparse-checkout-8 (Similar
to [1] but set their value as -1 when uninitialized. Tests seem to
fail though when I make this change.)