Elijah Newren [off-list ref] writes:

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?

Much closer to the latter (actually, removing ignore patterns, and
make the subsystem work with pathspecs).

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.

Perhaps.

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.)