Re: rev-list --sparse?

On Sun, 30 Oct 2005, Junio C Hamano wrote:

The --sparse flag does not seem to have much use either; not
giving pathspec has the same effect.

No.

--sparse _does_ have effect, but it's subtler.

Try "--sparse" together with a pathspec. It will only do the merge 
follow optimization.

Now, how useful is that? It's potentially useful as a way to "linearize 
the history". For example, let's say that you wanted to simplify the 
commit history for a project, and you only cared about the history of 
certain files - but you do want all the other files to _exist_ in that 
history.

So then you could do "git-rev-list --sparse HEAD -- filelist" and you'd 
get the minimal history that is still relevant in those files. Any merges 
that touch anything else than those files will becomes just regular diffs: 
they'll have been linearized away.

Useful? Quite possibly not. But I felt that simplifying merges was 
conceptually a very different operation from then compressing a linear 
history.

		Linus