Inconsistent behaviour with sparse-checkout: --filter can only be used when extensions.partialClone is set

Hi folks 👋🏽

This action is behaving a bit funny in my workflow.
Update: It works as expected on the main branch, but it's consistently failing when running against other branches, throwing the following error:

--filter can only be used when extensions.partialClone is set

Then it exits with code 128.

Re-running the workflow manually doesn't fix it.

Step:

- name: Checkout conf
        uses: actions/checkout@v4 
        with:
            path: config
            sparse-checkout: zap.conf
            sparse-checkout-cone-mode: false 

Logs on a bad run (dev branch):

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 17:39:37 GMT
  /usr/bin/git -c protocol.version=2 fetch --no-tags --prune --progress --no-recurse-submodules --filter=blob:none --depth=1 origin +REDACTED:refs/remotes/origin/dev_branch
Wed, 04 Oct 2023 17:39:37 GMT
  Error: fatal: --filter can only be used when extensions.partialClone is set
Wed, 04 Oct 2023 17:39:37 GMT
  The process '/usr/bin/git' failed with exit code 128

Details:

• git version 2.42.0
• Trigger: workflow dispatch
• Run was targeting workflow1.yml on dev_branch, the step is as described above
• manually re-running did not solve the issue
• I confirm zap.conf exists in the branch

Logs on a good run (main branch):

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 15:50:35 GMT
  /usr/bin/git -c protocol.version=2 fetch --no-tags --prune --progress --no-recurse-submodules --filter=blob:none --depth=1 origin +REDACTED:refs/remotes/origin/main
Wed, 04 Oct 2023 15:50:36 GMT
  remote: Enumerating objects: 9265, done.        
  ...

Details:

• Same git version
• Trigger: repository dispatch
• Run targeting workflow1.yml on main, the step is as described above

Thanks

Start with the workflow step using actions/checkout@v4 and compare the logged fetch commands for main and dev_branch. Reproduce the sparse-checkout case with Git 2.42.0, then trace how the action prepares and fetches non-main branches. Done means the same configuration no longer exits with code 128 and works consistently across branches.