Re: on subtree checkout

[Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr>]

Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:

> Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy wrote:
>> On Sun, Feb 24, 2008 at 5:03 PM, Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> "Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy" <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> I'm going to implement subtree checkout. [...]
>>>
>>>  As far as I can see the problem lies in merging...
>> 
>> Can you elaborate? I'm really noob at merging.
>
> What to do if when merging, or rebasing, there is conflict _outside_
> checked out subtree?

I suppose you have to forbid merges where anything non-trivial happens
outside the tree (i.e. allow it only if the set of renamed or changed
files is disjoint outside the tree, or only if only one of the
branches to merge have changes outside the tree).

That's probably not such a big limitation in practice for the user,
since by definition the user won't modify the files outside its tree,
so he can at least still merge with the branch he branched from.

I can see another problem: partial checkout is really interesting only
if you can do a partial clone ("partial" here in the sense "subtree").
Otherwise, your .git/ still eats your disk space and "clone" still
needs your bandwidth for something you won't use.

-- 
Matthieu