Richard Hartmann wrote:
On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 13:56, Garry Dolley <gdolley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I know from an external point of view, it seems pulling a subdir
wouldn't be a big deal; but if you look at git internals, you start
to realize why it's an option that isn't on the table.
Hm, I don't see a fundamental technical problem which would prevent one
from implementing the ability to checkout only a subdirectory into the
working directory (i.e. to add options to Git to make it reflect the
working directory as being a subdirectory of what is in Git's database).
At this level I don't see anything inherently different from SVN--except
maybe for directory renames: if someone else is renaming the directory
you've checked out, what should happend with your checkout? Git's
filebased rename tracking would just lead to everything vanishing from
your checkout. I don't know what happens in SVN, maybe it keeps track of
the directory rename and still sends you the changes of the directory
you've checked out even if it has now a different name on the server?
Anyway, an unavoidable difference is that you have to always clone the
whole Git *database*. With SVN the database stays on the server, with
Git it is being cloned. Just as I expect SVN to need the whole database
to be able to work (tracking renames across directories etc.), Git needs
the whole database too. So implementing subdirectory workingdir
checkouts wouldn't help reduce the bandwidth and storage necessary for
getting at the database.
That's my understanding as well. And you can simply branch
out a subdir when you want to work on it.
I guess what you are referring to is
$ git clone git://foo.com/bar.git
$ cd bar
$ rm -rf *
$ git checkout somesubdir
Now you've got only somesubdir/ below bar/. This solves the rename
problem insofar, as somesubdir will just be renamed if someone else
commits a "git mv somesubdir somethingelse" and you pull that change.
But there's also another caveat: "git status" will of course report the
other files as deleted, which is an accident waiting to happen when you
next run "git commit -a".
(In any case, this is just thinking louder than I deserve, as there's no
code at all in Git written by me.)
Christian.
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