[Idea] Auto generate sparse-checkout patterns based on workflow trigger "paths"

[mdhomer]

The sparse-checkout feature is really useful for larger repos, I'm wondering if this feature could leverage the pre-defined paths definition for the github-actions workflow triggers.

So if you defined:

on:
  push:
    paths:
      - 'MyApplication/src'
      - 'MyApplicaton/tests'

The checkout step could have a features like:

- uses: actions/checkout@v4
  with:
    sparse-checkout-trigger-paths: true

Which would auto-generate the sparse-checkout patterns based on the paths provided in the workflow definition.

I'm thinking based on the fact most Application builds with source code will use triggers based on the code needed to build the application, and thus could be re-used when checking out said code.

This is a rough idea, so not sure if the example provided captures the best implementation :)