Subject: [PATCH] last-modified: support sparse checkouts

From: "Johannes Schindelin via GitGitGadget" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2025 13:43:46 +0000

From: Johannes Schindelin <[email-masked]>

In a sparse checkout, a user might want to run `last-modified` on a
directory outside the worktree.

And even in non-sparse checkouts, a user might need to run that command
on a directory that does not exist in the worktree.

These use cases should be supported via the `--` separator between
revision and file arguments, which is even advertised in the
documentation. This patch fixes a tiny bug that prevents that from
working.

This fixes https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/issues/5978

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <[email-masked]>
---
    last-modified: support sparse checkouts

Published-As: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/releases/tag/pr-2013%2Fdscho%2Flast-modified-vs-sparse-checkouts-v1
Fetch-It-Via: git fetch https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git pr-2013/dscho/last-modified-vs-sparse-checkouts-v1
Pull-Request: https://github.com/gitgitgadget/git/pull/2013

 builtin/last-modified.c  | 3 ++-
 t/t8020-last-modified.sh | 8 ++++++++
 2 files changed, 10 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/builtin/last-modified.c b/builtin/last-modified.c
index b0ecbdc540..dc1e229f4d 100644
--- a/builtin/last-modified.c
+++ b/builtin/last-modified.c
@@ -525,7 +525,8 @@ int cmd_last_modified(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix,
 
 	argc = parse_options(argc, argv, prefix, last_modified_options,
 			     last_modified_usage,
-			     PARSE_OPT_KEEP_ARGV0 | PARSE_OPT_KEEP_UNKNOWN_OPT);
+			     PARSE_OPT_KEEP_ARGV0 | PARSE_OPT_KEEP_UNKNOWN_OPT |
+			     PARSE_OPT_KEEP_DASHDASH);
 
 	repo_config(repo, git_default_config, NULL);
 
diff --git a/t/t8020-last-modified.sh b/t/t8020-last-modified.sh
index a4c1114ee2..50f4312f71 100755
--- a/t/t8020-last-modified.sh
+++ b/t/t8020-last-modified.sh
@@ -78,6 +78,14 @@ test_expect_success 'last-modified subdir' '
 	EOF
 '
 
+test_expect_success 'last-modified in sparse checkout' '
+	test_when_finished "git sparse-checkout disable" &&
+	git sparse-checkout set b &&
+	check_last_modified -- a <<-\EOF
+	3 a
+	EOF
+'
+
 test_expect_success 'last-modified subdir recursive' '
 	check_last_modified -r a <<-\EOF
 	3 a/b/file

base-commit: 9a2fb147f2c61d0cab52c883e7e26f5b7948e3ed
-- 
gitgitgadget