Re: [RFC v1] Add virtual file system settings and hook proc

On Mon, Nov 5, 2018 at 12:40 PM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
[off-list ref] wrote:

On Sun, Nov 04 2018, Duy Nguyen wrote:

quoted

On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 9:53 PM Ben Peart [off-list ref] wrote:

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+core.virtualFilesystem::
+       If set, the value of this variable is used as a command which
+       will identify all files and directories that are present in
+       the working directory.  Git will only track and update files
+       listed in the virtual file system.  Using the virtual file system
+       will supersede the sparse-checkout settings which will be ignored.
+       See the "virtual file system" section of linkgit:githooks[6].

It sounds like "virtual file system" is just one of the use cases for
this feature, which is more about a dynamic source of sparse-checkout
bits. Perhaps name the config key with something along sparse checkout
instead of naming it after a use case.

It's more than a dynamic sparse-checkout because the same list is also
used to exclude any file/folder not listed.  That means any file not
listed won't ever be updated by git (like in 'checkout' for example) so
'stale' files could be left in the working directory.  It also means git
won't find new/untracked files unless they are specifically added to the
list.

OK. I'm not at all interested in carrying maintenance burden for some
software behind closed doors. I could see values in having a more
flexible sparse checkout but this now seems like very tightly designed
for GVFS. So unless there's another use case (preferably open source)
 for this, I don't think this should be added in git.git.

I haven't looked at the patch in any detail beyond skimming it, and
you're more familiar with this area...

But in principle I'm very interested in getting something like this in
git.git, even if we were to assume GVFS was a 100% proprietary
implementation.

I have nothing against building a GVFS-like solution. If what's
submitted can be the building blocks for that, great! But if it was
just for GVFS (and it was not available to everybody) then no thank
you.
-- 
Duy