Re: [PATCH/RFC] sparse-checkout: take care of "--end-of-options" in set/add

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Thu, Dec 21, 2023 at 02:04:56PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > Right, that is the "gotcha" I mentioned in my other email. Though that
> > is the way it has behaved historically, my argument is that users are
> > unreasonable to expect it to work:
> >
> >   1. It is not consistent with the rest of Git commands.
> >
> >   2. It is inconsistent with respect to existing options (and is an
> >      accident waiting to happen when new options are added).
> >
> > So I'd consider it a bug-fix.
> 
> So the counter-proposal here is just to drop KEEP_UNKNOWN_OPT and
> deliberately break them^W^W^Wrealign their expectations?

Yes. :) But keep in mind we are un-breaking other people, like those who
typo:

  git sparse-checkout --sikp-checks

and don't see an error (instead, we make a garbage entry in the sparse
checkout file).

> I do not have much stake in sparse-checkout, so I am fine with that
> direction.  But I suspect other folks on the list would have users
> of their own who would rather loudly complain to them if we broke
> them ;-) 

Likewise, I have never used sparse-checkout myself, and I don't care
_that_ much. My interest is mostly in having various Git commands behave
consistently. This whole discussion started because the centralized
--end-of-options fix interacted badly with this unusual behavior.

-Peff