Re: [PATCH v3] checkout: optimize "git checkout -b <new_branch>"

On Mon, Aug 20, 2018 at 8:16 PM Elijah Newren [off-list ref] wrote:

Playing with sparse-checkout, it feels to me like a half-baked
feature.  It seems like it required too much manual work, and it was
sometimes hard to tell if I was misunderstanding configuration rules
or I was just running into bugs in the code.  I think I hit both but I
didn't really want to get side-tracked further, yet.  (I do want to
eventually come back to it.)  The only reason someone would go through
that pain is if it provided massive performance benefits.

In my defense it was one of my first contribution when I was naiver
and basically an evolution of "git update-index --assume-unchanged". I
have something in the queue to improve/complement sparse-checkout but
my last update on that branch was 2.5 years ago, so it's not coming
soon.

I'd love to year how sparse checkout could be improved, or even
replaced. I think we still have to have some configuration rules, and
yes the flexibility of sparse checkout (or gitignore to be precise)
rules is a double-edged sword.
-- 
Duy