On Wed, Jan 5, 2022 at 3:29 PM Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

Elijah Newren [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

So, should "**.py" go directly into the sparse-checkout file as-is, or
be translated to "my/current/subdir/**.py" first?

Maybe translating is always fine, or maybe we want to throw an error
when: (not using cone mode and prefix is non-empty and any patterns
are provided).

Thoughts?

Perhaps allow things like ":(glob,icase,top)frotz" to be passed and
treating them as pathspec is the most sensible way to go outside the
cone mode?  As far as I understand, the cone mode is a strict subset
that is straight-jacketed into "no patterns allowed, just concrete
directory names and nothing else" for simplicity, so it is perfectly
OK for these two to be taking different things.

Are you possibly confusing pathspecs with gitignore patterns here?
(Or am I?)  Or are you suggesting that sparse-checkout be modified to
accept either gitignore-style files or pathspecs and handle both?

I have never liked that gitignore-style patterns were used for
sparse-checkout, but it has always seemed a bit too late to change it.
Ever since Stolee introduced cone-mode, my preferred strategy for
fixing the gitignore-style patterns problem, assuming we are allowed
to do so, is to deprecate if not kill non-cone mode.  (And in the
meantime, I'm just doing due diligence when I mention non-cone mode in
my reviews.)