Re: [PATCH] clone: allow initial sparse checkouts

"Robin H. Johnson" [off-list ref] writes:

On Mon, Feb 24, 2014 at 09:47:16AM -0800,  Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

"Robin H. Johnson" [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

The only other clean alternative would be implementing ONLY
--sparse-checkout-from, and letting uses use fds creatively:
--sparse-checkout-from <(echo X; echo Y)

Not all POSIX shells have such an abomination that is process
substitution.  You can easily work it around by adopting the usual
convention to use "-" to read from the standasrd input, though.

	(echo X; echo Y) | cmd --sparse-checkout-from -

Is that a vote that you'd like to see a --sparse-checkout-from variant
of my patch?

Honestly, I do not particularly care too much about this feature,
regardless of the interface [*1*].

It is just a vote that says "if --something-from form is going to be
implemented, it should be able to read from the standard input with
'-', unless there is a compelling reason not to do so".


[Footnote]

*1* In the longer term, I think sparse checkout is broken as a
concept and I view this "use sparse checkout from the get-go" merely
a stop-gap measure to make the band-aid a bit less painful to use.
What you really want is a narrow clone, which is conceptually cleaner
but a lot harder implentation-wise.

Not that keeping a band-aid usable longer is necessarily bad in the
real world, though---so even I said *I*'m not interested, that is
different from saying I'm not taking a patch on this topic.