Re: [RFC PATCH v3 8/8] --sparse for porcelains

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

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 10:19 PM, Johannes
Schindelin<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 17 Aug 2009, Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 8:35 PM, Johannes
>> Schindelin<Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
>>
>> > The problem of course is that the other branch has an ancient version
>> > of that file (which should _not_ overwrite the current, modified
>> > version!), i.e. "git diff HEAD..other -- file" does not come empty.
>> >
>> > As 'file' is assume-unchanged, zinnnng, the file gets "updated".
>>
>> Then it is a bug. Assume-unchanged as in reading is good.
>> Assume-unchanged in writing sounds scary. Something like this should
>> fix it (not well tested though). It's on top of my series, but you can
>> adapt it to 'next' or 'master' easily.
>
> No.
>
> The purpose of 'assume-unchanged' is to tell Git that it has no business
> checking that the file is unchanged.  It should _assume_ that it is
> unchanged.  That's what this flag says.
>
> So do you agree that assume-changed is not quite similar enough to sparse
> to use the same bit?

If you define it that way, yes I agree.

>> > Another use case: documentation.  I do not have that use case yet, but
>> > I know about people who do.
>>
>> Translators usually checkout one or two files (I am Vietnamese
>> Translation Coordinator of GNOME, but well... I check them all out. I
>> suppose "normal" translators would not want to do like I do.)
>
> Exactly.
>
> echo /Documentation/ > .git/info/sparse
>
> Remember: the documentation contributors are the least programming-savvy
> contributors of any project.

[wanted to make a joke here, but it seemed destructive, snipped]

>> >  Specifying what you _want_ to have checked out is much more
>> > straight-forward here than the opposite.
>>
>> I think it depends on type of projects. For documentation projects, you
>> may want a few files. For software projects, usually you need everything
>> _except_ a few big directories. For WebKit, it's a bunch of test data
>> that I don't care about. Firmware in hardware-related projects or media
>> files in game projects fall in the same category. I don't have strong
>> opinion on this. Either include or exclude is fine to me.
>
> Okay, let me just ask: if you have a sparse checkout, what would you think
> I mean when I talk about the "sparse files"?

If I have to answer in 2 seconds, "sparse files" are files in working
directory. If I have more time, I tend to think that in "sparse
<something>", something should be a container, an area, therefore
"sparse files" do not make sense to me while "sparse
checkout/worktree" does. So, .git/info/sparse-checkout (with "in"
patterns)?
-- 
Duy