Garry Dolley wrote:
On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 10:32:56PM +0200, Christian Jaeger wrote:
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
[...]
Right, but I think cloning the entire git database just to get a
subdir is a fundamental technical problem. It's no different than
git-clone + checkout + rm -rf <what I don't want in working tree>
We're in "violent agreement" here.
In that sense, git already has support for cloning subdirectories,
which is why I don't think this method applies to what the original
post author meant when they referred to "support for cloning sub
directories".
I just think it's worth pointing out the difference between the working
dir and the database. It should be as easy to implement checking out
subdirectories in Git as it was in SVN (except, again, that, iff
directory renames should be tracked, some code would have to be written
to find out about directory renames, which SVN solves in a simpler way
by just requiring that the user specifies renames explicitely). It's
worth pointing out that working directory checkouts and database cloning
are separate operatoins and it's only the database cloning which is, per
definition (as it is a distributed VCS) different from SVN.
:)
If you really wanted, I suppose you could additionally look into
implementing a kind of shallow cloning that only copies objects over the
wire which are necessary for representing the subdirectory you're
interested in.
Christian.
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