Add support for sparse checkouts (#1369)

* Add support for sparse checkouts

* sparse-checkout: optionally turn off cone mode

While it _is_ true that cone mode is the default nowadays (mainly for
performance reasons: code mode is much faster than non-cone mode), there
_are_ legitimate use cases where non-cone mode is really useful.

Let's add a flag to optionally disable cone mode.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>

* Verify minimum Git version for sparse checkout

The `git sparse-checkout` command is available only since Git version
v2.25.0. The `actions/checkout` Action actually supports older Git
versions than that; As of time of writing, the minimum version is
v2.18.0.

Instead of raising this minimum version even for users who do not
require a sparse checkout, only check for this minimum version
specifically when a sparse checkout was asked for.

Suggested-by: Tingluo Huang <tingluohuang@github.com>
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>

* Support sparse checkout/LFS better

Instead of fetching all the LFS objects present in the current revision
in a sparse checkout, whether they are needed inside the sparse cone or
not, let's instead only pull the ones that are actually needed.

To do that, let's avoid running that preemptive `git lfs fetch` call in
case of a sparse checkout.

An alternative that was considered during the development of this patch
(and ultimately rejected) was to use `git lfs pull --include <path>...`,
but it turned out to be too inflexible because it requires exact paths,
not the patterns that are available via the sparse checkout definition,
and that risks running into command-line length limitations.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>

---------

Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Co-authored-by: Daniel <daniel.fernandez@feverup.com>

.github/workflows/test.yml

@@ -72,6 +72,33 @@ jobs:
         shell: bash
         run: __test__/verify-side-by-side.sh
 
+      # Sparse checkout
+      - name: Sparse checkout
+        uses: ./
+        with:
+          sparse-checkout: |
+            __test__
+            .github
+            dist
+          path: sparse-checkout
+
+      - name: Verify sparse checkout
+        run: __test__/verify-sparse-checkout.sh
+
+      # Sparse checkout (non-cone mode)
+      - name: Sparse checkout (non-cone mode)
+        uses: ./
+        with:
+          sparse-checkout: |
+            /__test__/
+            /.github/
+            /dist/
+          sparse-checkout-cone-mode: false
+          path: sparse-checkout-non-cone-mode
+
+      - name: Verify sparse checkout (non-cone mode)
+        run: __test__/verify-sparse-checkout-non-cone-mode.sh
+
       # LFS
       - name: Checkout LFS
         uses: ./