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-rw-r--r--Documentation/technical/index-format.txt19
1 files changed, 19 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/technical/index-format.txt b/Documentation/technical/index-format.txt
index d363a71c37..65da0daaa5 100644
--- a/Documentation/technical/index-format.txt
+++ b/Documentation/technical/index-format.txt
@@ -44,6 +44,13 @@ Git index format
localization, no special casing of directory separator '/'). Entries
with the same name are sorted by their stage field.
+ An index entry typically represents a file. However, if sparse-checkout
+ is enabled in cone mode (`core.sparseCheckoutCone` is enabled) and the
+ `extensions.sparseIndex` extension is enabled, then the index may
+ contain entries for directories outside of the sparse-checkout definition.
+ These entries have mode `040000`, include the `SKIP_WORKTREE` bit, and
+ the path ends in a directory separator.
+
32-bit ctime seconds, the last time a file's metadata changed
this is stat(2) data
@@ -385,3 +392,15 @@ The remaining data of each directory block is grouped by type:
in this block of entries.
- 32-bit count of cache entries in this block
+
+== Sparse Directory Entries
+
+ When using sparse-checkout in cone mode, some entire directories within
+ the index can be summarized by pointing to a tree object instead of the
+ entire expanded list of paths within that tree. An index containing such
+ entries is a "sparse index". Index format versions 4 and less were not
+ implemented with such entries in mind. Thus, for these versions, an
+ index containing sparse directory entries will include this extension
+ with signature { 's', 'd', 'i', 'r' }. Like the split-index extension,
+ tools should avoid interacting with a sparse index unless they understand
+ this extension.