Re: [PATCH v3 8/8] sparse-checkout: clear tracked sparse dirs

[Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>]

Hi Elijah,

On Fri, 20 Aug 2021, Elijah Newren wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 1:48 AM Johannes Schindelin
> <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> wrote:
> >
> > Having said that, even after mulling over this behavior and sleeping
> > over it, I am unsure what the best way forward would be. Just because
> > it is easy to explain does not make it right.
> >
> > It is tricky to decide mostly because "ignored" files are definitely
> > not always build output. Apart from VIM's temporary files, users like
> > me frequently write other files and/or directories that we simply do
> > not want to see tracked in Git. For example, I often test things in an
> > `a1.c` file that -- for convenience -- lives in the current worktree.
> > Obviously I don't want Git to track it, but I also don't want it to be
> > deleted, so I often add corresponding lines to `.git/info/exclude`.
> > Likewise, I sometimes download additional information related to what
> > I am implementing, and that also lives in the current worktree (but
> > then, I usually am too lazy to add an entry to `.git/info/exclude` in
> > those cases).
>
> I do the same thing, and I know other users that do as well...but I
> don't put such files in directories that are irrelevant to me.  I create
> cruft files near other files that I'm working on, or in a special
> directory of its own, but not under some directory that is irrelevant to
> the areas I'm working on.
>
> For reference, we implemented something like this in our `sparsify`
> wrapper we have internally, where 'git clean -fdX <all sparse
> directories>` is executed whenever folks sparsify.  (We have our own
> tool and don't have users use sparse-checkout directly, because our tool
> computes dependencies to determine which directories are needed.) I was
> really hesitant to add that cleaning behavior by default, and just made
> it an option.  My colleagues tired of all the bug reports about
> left-around directories and made it the default, waiting to hear
> complaints.  We never got one.  It's been over a year.

It is really nice to hear that you have evidence from users using this in
practice. I find that very convincing, and it weighs much more than all of
my (very theoretical) considerations.

Thank you,
Dscho