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

From: Jakub Narebski <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2009 02:49:46 +0200

Jakub Narebski wrote:
> Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> 
> > The thing is: we need a way to determine quickly and without any 
> > ambiguity whether a file is tracked, assumed unchanged, or sparse'd-out 
> > (which Nguyễn calls no-checkout).
> 
> Let's reiterate: "assume-unchanged" is about telling git that it should
> assume for performance reasons that state of file in working directory
> is the same as state of file in the index.  But, from what was said in
> this thread, there are situations where git for correctness reasons
> ignores performance hack.
> 
> "no-checkout" bit is about telling git that the file is not present
> in working directory, and it has to use version from the index.  Then
> there is a question if there is file in working area (e.g. from applying
> patch) which corresponds to a "no-checkout" file in index (corresponds
> because of rename detection).

Also there is a question if one might want to use them together.  I think
it is not inconceivable ;-)  One might want for example to limit checkout
to some subdirectory, but within that directory one might want to use 
assume-unchanged bit, because filesystem performance sucks (FAT, NFS).
Now couple that with changing in sparse patterns...

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland