Re: Bug report - sparse-checkout ignores prefix when run in subdirectories

[Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Jan 5, 2022 at 3:29 PM Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>
> Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > 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.)