In a sparse checkout scenario, the command git checkout . restores the directories that should be ignored. Is this by design, or a potential problem in Git? I’m using git checkout . to discard any changes I’ve made to my working copy -- is there another command that will do the same and not suffer from this problem?
Here’s a reproducible example:
rm -rf test
git init test
cd test
for f in a b c; do
mkdir $f
touch $f/$f
git add $f/$f
git commit -m "added $f"
done
git config core.sparsecheckout true
echo a > .git/info/sparse-checkout
echo b >> .git/info/sparse-checkout
git read-tree -m -u HEAD
ls
a b
So far, so good. Here's the problem:
git checkout .
ls
a b c
By the way:
git --version
git version 1.7.10.4
The question Why do excluded files keep reappearing in my git sparse checkout? is related, but much older and doesn’t quite describe what I’m seeing.