On 12/12/08, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:
So "git grep -e frotz Documentation/", whether you only check out
Documentation or the whole tree, should grep only in Documentation area,
and "git grep -e frotz" should grep in the whole tree, even if you happen
to have a sparse checkout. By definition, a sparse checkout has no
modifications outside the checkout area, so whenever grep wants to look
for strings outside the checkout area it should pretend as if the same
content as what the index records is in the work tree. This is consistent
with the way how "git diff" in a sparsely checked out work tree should
behave.
Assume someone is using sparse checkout with KDE git repository. They
sparse-checkout kdeutils module and do "git grep -e foo". I would
expect that the command only searches in kdeutils only (and is the
current behavior).
--
Duy