The `sparseCheckout` argument allows the user to specify directories or
patterns of files, which Git uses to filter files it should check-out.
Git expects a multi-line string on stdin ("newline-delimited list", see
`git-sparse-checkout(1)`), but within nixpkgs it is more consistent to
use a list of strings instead. The list elements are joined to a
multi-line string only before passing it to the builder script.
A deprecation warning is emitted if a (multi-line) string is passed to
`sparseCheckout`, but for the time being it is still accepted.
It gives a warning on the lazy-trees branch of Nix
(NixOS/nix#6530)
one of these was also giving me an error (the one in lib/trivial probably)
```
$ nix build
warning: applying 'toString' to path '/home/artturin/nixgits/my-nixpkgs/nixos/modules/installer/sd-card/sd
-image-aarch64.nix' and then accessing it is deprecated, at /home/artturin/nixgits/my-nixpkgs/lib/modules.
nix:349:99
warning: applying 'toString' to path '/home/artturin/nixgits/my-nixpkgs/.git' and then accessing it is dep
recated, at /home/artturin/nixgits/my-nixpkgs/lib/sources.nix:35:32
warning: applying 'toString' to path '/home/artturin/nixgits/my-nixpkgs/nixos/modules/system/etc/etc.nix'
and then accessing it is deprecated, at «stdin»:0
warning: applying 'toString' to path '/home/artturin/nixgits/my-nixpkgs/nixos/modules/system/etc/etc-activ
ation.nix' and then accessing it is deprecated, at «stdin»:0
warning: applying 'toString' to path '/home/artturin/nixgits/my-nixpkgs/nixos/modules/installer/sd-card/sd
-image-aarch64.nix' and then accessing it is deprecated, at «stdin»:0
error: cannot decode virtual path '/nix/store/virtual0000000000000000000000005-source'
(use '--show-trace' to show detailed location information)
```
A tricky thing about FreeBSD is that there is no stable ABI across
versions. That means that putting in the version as part of the config
string is paramount.
We have a parsed represenation that separates name versus version to
accomplish this. We include FreeBSD versions 12 and 13 to demonstrate
how it works.
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/89885 ensures that fetches are
done securely (i.e. without `--insecure`) when the `hash` parameter is one of
the four special "fake" hashes. However the manual was not updated in that PR.
This commit updates the manual to account for the already-merged changes from
that PR.
Co-authored-by: Valentin Gagarin <valentin.gagarin@tweag.io>
