I have a system where I checkout by default everything except one directory. Then the rules in the top-level sources can selectivly reintroduce subdirectories as required for the build target. I have deployed, using git 1.7.2.5, a set of git trees which use the following sparse-checkout rules to achieve this. / !exclude/ exclude/reinclude I have however discovered that if the reincluded directory is the same as the first part of any other path then that path will also be checked out. / !exlcude exclude/wanted will checkout both: exclude/wanted exclude/wanted_not This appears to have bee fixed in git 1.7.10.2 but from that version of git onwards using '/' to request everything and then exclude a specific directory from it no longer works. While I have been able to contrive the same effect with recent versions of git using the following updated sparse-checkout rules /* !exclude/ exclude/reinclude Even with this work-around there are two problems: 1) If I have a path: exclude/reinclude/exclude, this will now be exluded where I would expect it to be included as it was with 1.7.2.5 2) I have a large number of deployed trees across a number of machines that have the existing format which will break when git operations are performed after a upgrade to the latest git. I believe that the interpretation of '/' should be 'everything in the repo', from which later rules can exclude. I think this is a bug in recent versions of git. I have been working on some ideas for a fix to the git code based along these lines. Can anyone confirm if my analysis is correct or provide an alternate solution? Also I would like to know if anyone knows the solution to point 1) above as this also blocks upgrading to the latest version of git. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html