On 9/23/2022 11:46 AM, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Derrick Stolee [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

This is an interesting find! I wonder how many people are hitting this
in the wild. Perhaps merge.stat should be added to the optional, but
recommended config options in scalar.c.

Hmph.  It somehow sounds like throwing the baby out with the
bathwater, doesn't it.

You are only interested in a few directories in the project.  You
pull from somebody else (or the central repository), and end up
getting updates to both inside and outside the areas of your
interest.

As a project gets larger and better modularized, does it become more
likely that such an update will happen more often?

I am very tempted to suggest that the diffstat after a merge in such
a project should use the sparse cone(s) as pathspec.  Disabling the
"what happened in this merge" report altogether is a way too blunt
instrument, isn't it?

You're right that having a sparse-checkout-scoped diffstat is likely
to be interesting in the long term. It does require updating its
format to describe "some paths outside the sparse-checkout changed,
but we won't give you the full diffstat there".

Using something like the config to disable it in the short term
would certainly hide the pain point, but you're right that we shouldn't
stop there.

Thanks,
-Stolee