[tikkabhuna]

I never understood the value of directory mapping when we used Perforce. It only seemed to add complexity when one team checked out code in different hierarchies and then some builds worked, some didn’t. Git was wonderful for having a simple layout.

[senderista]

You might feel differently if you worked on just a few directories in a giant repo. Sparse client views were a great feature of SD.

[int_19h]

I'm in exactly this situation with Perforce today, and I still hate it. The same problem OP described applies - you need to know which exact directories to check out to build, run tests etc successfully. You end up with wikis filled with obscure lists of mappings, many of them outdated, some still working but including a lot of cruft because people just copy it around. Sometimes the required directories change over time and your existing workspaces just stop working.

Git has sparse client views with VFS these days.