Re: [RFC PATCH 00/12] Sparse checkout

["Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy" <pclouds@gmail.com>]

On 7/24/08, James Pickens <jepicken@gmail.com> wrote:
> Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy <pclouds <at> gmail.com> writes:
>
>  > I have not looked at non-builtin commands yet, but I think it's not
>  > a big deal. We have several rounds before this series is good enough ;)
>  > So in short, sparse prefix will be stored in config, core.sparsecheckout.
>  > you have three new commands to enter/update/leave sparse checkout:
>  >
>  > git clone --path=prefix       # clone with sparse checkout
>  > git checkout --path=prefix    # limit/update checkout paths
>  > git checkout --full           # stop sparse checkout
>  >
>
>
> First things first, thanks a lot for working on this feature.  I have an
>  enormous project in CVS (144GB repo, containing 65000 directories and
>  463000 files) that I've been wanting to convert to git for a while now,
>  and the lack of sparse checkouts was the only thing about git that was
>  standing in the way.  The project is so big that checking out the whole
>  tree all the time is unworkable, and I think my coworkers would hang me
>  if I tried to make them use submodules.  We already use sparse checkouts
>  in CVS to make it manageable, so sparse checkout support in git would
>  vastly simplify the transition.
>
>  I played around with the patch briefly, and I have a couple of comments
>  on the interface.
>
>  First, I would want a capability to checkout a directory non-recursively.
>  I.e., checkout directory A/B, without also checking out directory A/B/C.
>  Perhaps a modifier could be added to a path element to make it
>  non-recursive.

This one is difficult (and may probably produce more intrusive patch).
Let's see what I can do.

>  Second, I would want a capability to checkout and release directories
>  incrementally, similar to how we do it in cvs.  For example, I might do
>  the following in cvs:
>
>  $ cvs co -l A         # Checkout dir A non-recursively
>  $ cd A
>  $ cvs up -l -d B1 B2  # Checkout dirs A/B1 and A/B2 non-recursively
>  $ cd B1
>  $ cvs up -d C1 C2     # Checkout dirs A/B1/C1 and A/B1/C2 recursively
>  (Oops, didn't need C2)
>  $ cvs release -d C2
>  At this point I would have the following directory tree, assuming the C1
>  directory in the repo contained a D1 directory:
>
>  A/
>  A/B1/
>  A/B1/C1/
>  A/B1/C1/D1/
>  A/B2/
>
>  A similar capability in git would be much appreciated.

You can do that with "git checkout --path" (non-recursive checkout aside):

$ git checkout --path=A                     # checkout full A
$ git checkout --path=A/B1/C1               # no, limit to A/B1/C1 only
$ git checkout --path=A/B1/C1:A/B2          # extend to A/B2 too

>
>  Finally, I noticed what I think is a bug: if you do a partial checkout of
>  a non-existing directory, you just get an empty tree.  I would expect to
>  get an error message in that case.

Thanks.

>  I hope this is helpful, and thanks again for working on this.
>
>  James
>
>
>
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-- 
Duy