On Tue, Sep 27, 2022 at 8:44 AM Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

"Elijah Newren via GitGitGadget" [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

+  * Does the name --[no-]restrict sound good to others?  Are there better options?

Everybody in this thread are interested in sparse checkout, which
unfortunately blinds them from the fact that "restrict to", "limit
to", "focus on", etc. need not to be limited to the sparse checkout
feature.  We must have something that hints that the option is about
the sparse checkout feature.

As to the verbs, I do not mind "restrict to".  Other good ones I do
not mind choosing are "limit to" and "focus on".  They would equally
convey the same thing in this context.  And the object for these
verb phrases are the area of interest, those paths without the
skip-worktree bit, the paths outside the sparse cone(s).

Or we could go the other way.  We are excluding those paths with the
skip-worktree bit, so "exclude" and "ignore" are natural candidates.

If you're thinking about plain "exclude", that's already a flag in
'apply', 'am', 'clean', and 'ls-files'.

Also, if you want these words alone, then they also seem to lack hints
that the option is about the sparse checkout feature.  Expand them a
bit, perhaps?  "--ignore-sparsity"?
"--exclude-sparse-checkout-restrictions"?

Assuming we are worried about needing "--no-" variants, wouldn't the
risk of a "--no-ignore-sparsity" be worse than a "--no-restrict" in
terms of awkwardness, given the double negative?

These two classes are good if the "restrict" behaviour will never be
the default.  When it is the default, the option often used will
become "--no-restrict", which is awkward.

        Personally I am slightly in favor of "focus on" (i.e.
        "--focus" vs "--unfocus") as that meshes well with the
        concept of "the areas of the working tree paths that I am
        interested in right now", which may already hint that the
        option is about the sparse checkout feature (i.e. "I am
        focusing on these areas right now") and can stay short.  But
        this is just one person's opinion.

I'll add --focus/--unfocus to the list.  --unfocus seems a bit more
awkward to me than --no-restrict, but that might just be me.  If
others really liked it, I'd be fine with it.

Right now, I'm leaning a bit more towards Stolee's
--scope={sparse,all} (or maybe --scope={sparse,dense}?)