Merge branch 'sb/t5531-update-desc'
[git] / Documentation / RelNotes / 1.8.1.txt
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1Git v1.8.1 Release Notes
2========================
3
4Backward compatibility notes
5----------------------------
6
7In the next major release (not *this* one), we will change the
8behavior of the "git push" command.
9
10When "git push [$there]" does not say what to push, we have used the
11traditional "matching" semantics so far (all your branches were sent
12to the remote as long as there already are branches of the same name
13over there). We will use the "simple" semantics that pushes the
14current branch to the branch with the same name, only when the current
15branch is set to integrate with that remote branch. There is a user
16preference configuration variable "push.default" to change this, and
17"git push" will warn about the upcoming change until you set this
18variable in this release.
19
20"git branch --set-upstream" is deprecated and may be removed in a
21relatively distant future. "git branch [-u|--set-upstream-to]" has
ee26a6e2 22been introduced with a saner order of arguments to replace it.
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23
24
25Updates since v1.8.0
26--------------------
27
28UI, Workflows & Features
29
8f8af9f4 30 * Command-line completion scripts for tcsh and zsh have been added.
e8a1f5a2 31
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32 * "git-prompt" scriptlet (in contrib/completion) can be told to paint
33 pieces of the hints in the prompt string in colors.
34
35 * Some documentation pages that used to ship only in the plain text
36 format are now formatted in HTML as well.
f94c3251 37
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38 * We used to have a workaround for a bug in ancient "less" that
39 causes it to exit without any output when the terminal is resized.
40 The bug has been fixed in "less" version 406 (June 2007), and the
41 workaround has been removed in this release.
42
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43 * When "git checkout" checks out a branch, it tells the user how far
44 behind (or ahead) the new branch is relative to the remote tracking
45 branch it builds upon. The message now also advises how to sync
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46 them up by pushing or pulling. This can be disabled with the
47 advice.statusHints configuration variable.
8f8af9f4 48
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49 * "git config --get" used to diagnose presence of multiple
50 definitions of the same variable in the same configuration file as
51 an error, but it now applies the "last one wins" rule used by the
52 internal configuration logic. Strictly speaking, this may be an
53 API regression but it is expected that nobody will notice it in
54 practice.
55
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56 * A new configuration variable "diff.context" can be used to
57 give the default number of context lines in the patch output, to
58 override the hardcoded default of 3 lines.
8f8af9f4 59
3a189da6 60 * "git format-patch" learned the "--notes=<ref>" option to give
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61 notes for the commit after the three-dash lines in its output.
62
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63 * "git log -p -S<string>" now looks for the <string> after applying
64 the textconv filter (if defined); earlier it inspected the contents
65 of the blobs without filtering.
66
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67 * "git log --grep=<pcre>" learned to honor the "grep.patterntype"
68 configuration set to "perl".
69
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70 * "git replace -d <object>" now interprets <object> as an extended
71 SHA-1 (e.g. HEAD~4 is allowed), instead of only accepting full hex
72 object name.
3a189da6 73
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74 * "git rm $submodule" used to punt on removing a submodule working
75 tree to avoid losing the repository embedded in it. Because
76 recent git uses a mechanism to separate the submodule repository
77 from the submodule working tree, "git rm" learned to detect this
ee26a6e2 78 case and removes the submodule working tree when it is safe to do so.
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f94c3251 80 * "git send-email" used to prompt for the sender address, even when
ee26a6e2 81 the committer identity is well specified (e.g. via user.name and
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82 user.email configuration variables). The command no longer gives
83 this prompt when not necessary.
84
85 * "git send-email" did not allow non-address garbage strings to
86 appear after addresses on Cc: lines in the patch files (and when
87 told to pick them up to find more recipients), e.g.
88
89 Cc: Stable Kernel <stable@k.org> # for v3.2 and up
90
91 The command now strips " # for v3.2 and up" part before adding the
92 remainder of this line to the list of recipients.
93
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94 * "git submodule add" learned to add a new submodule at the same
95 path as the path where an unrelated submodule was bound to in an
96 existing revision via the "--name" option.
97
98 * "git submodule sync" learned the "--recursive" option.
99
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100 * "diff.submodule" configuration variable can be used to give custom
101 default value to the "git diff --submodule" option.
102
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103 * "git symbolic-ref" learned the "-d $symref" option to delete the
104 named symbolic ref, which is more intuitive way to spell it than
ee26a6e2 105 "update-ref -d --no-deref $symref".
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106
107
108Foreign Interface
109
110 * "git cvsimport" can be told to record timezones (other than GMT)
111 per-author via its author info file.
112
113 * The remote helper interface to interact with subversion
114 repositories (one of the GSoC 2012 projects) has been merged.
115
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116 * A new remote-helper interface for Mercurial has been added to
117 contrib/remote-helpers.
118
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119 * The documentation for git(1) was pointing at a page at an external
120 site for the list of authors that no longer existed. The link has
121 been updated to point at an alternative site.
122
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123
124Performance, Internal Implementation, etc.
125
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126 * Compilation on Cygwin with newer header files are supported now.
127
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128 * A couple of low-level implementation updates on MinGW.
129
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130 * The logic to generate the initial advertisement from "upload-pack"
131 (i.e. what is invoked by "git fetch" on the other side of the
132 connection) to list what refs are available in the repository has
133 been optimized.
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134
135 * The logic to find set of attributes that match a given path has
136 been optimized.
137
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138 * Use preloadindex in "git diff-index" and "git update-index", which
139 has a nice speedup on systems with slow stat calls (and even on
140 Linux).
141
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142
143Also contains minor documentation updates and code clean-ups.
144
145
146Fixes since v1.8.0
147------------------
148
149Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.8.0 in the maintenance
150track are contained in this release (see release notes to them for
151details).
152
153 * The configuration parser had an unnecessary hardcoded limit on
154 variable names that was not checked consistently.
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155
156 * The "say" function in the test scaffolding incorrectly allowed
157 "echo" to interpret "\a" as if it were a C-string asking for a
158 BEL output.
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159
160 * "git mergetool" feeds /dev/null as a common ancestor when dealing
161 with an add/add conflict, but p4merge backend cannot handle
162 it. Work it around by passing a temporary empty file.
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163
164 * "git log -F -E --grep='<ere>'" failed to use the given <ere>
165 pattern as extended regular expression, and instead looked for the
166 string literally.
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167
168 * "git grep -e pattern <tree>" asked the attribute system to read
169 "<tree>:.gitattributes" file in the working tree, which was
170 nonsense.
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171
172 * A symbolic ref refs/heads/SYM was not correctly removed with "git
173 branch -d SYM"; the command removed the ref pointed by SYM
174 instead.
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175
176 * Update "remote tracking branch" in the documentation to
177 "remote-tracking branch".
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178
179 * "git pull --rebase" run while the HEAD is detached tried to find
180 the upstream branch of the detached HEAD (which by definition
181 does not exist) and emitted unnecessary error messages.
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182
183 * The refs/replace hierarchy was not mentioned in the
184 repository-layout docs.
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185
186 * Various rfc2047 quoting issues around a non-ASCII name on the
3a189da6 187 From: line in the output from format-patch have been corrected.
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188
189 * Sometimes curl_multi_timeout() function suggested a wrong timeout
3a189da6 190 value when there is no file descriptor to wait on and the http
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191 transport ended up sleeping for minutes in select(2) system call.
192 A workaround has been added for this.
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193
194 * For a fetch refspec (or the result of applying wildcard on one),
195 we always want the RHS to map to something inside "refs/"
196 hierarchy, but the logic to check it was not exactly right.
197 (merge 5c08c1f jc/maint-fetch-tighten-refname-check later to maint).
198
199 * "git diff -G<pattern>" did not honor textconv filter when looking
200 for changes.
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201
202 * Some HTTP servers ask for auth only during the actual packing phase
203 (not in ls-remote phase); this is not really a recommended
204 configuration, but the clients used to fail to authenticate with
205 such servers.
206 (merge 2e736fd jk/maint-http-half-auth-fetch later to maint).
207
208 * "git p4" used to try expanding malformed "$keyword$" that spans
209 across multiple lines.
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210
211 * Syntax highlighting in "gitweb" was not quite working.
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212
213 * RSS feed from "gitweb" had a xss hole in its title output.
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214
215 * "git config --path $key" segfaulted on "[section] key" (a boolean
216 "true" spelled without "=", not "[section] key = true").
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217
218 * "git checkout -b foo" while on an unborn branch did not say
219 "Switched to a new branch 'foo'" like other cases.
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220
221 * Various codepaths have workaround for a common misconfiguration to
222 spell "UTF-8" as "utf8", but it was not used uniformly. Most
223 notably, mailinfo (which is used by "git am") lacked this support.
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224
225 * We failed to mention a file without any content change but whose
226 permission bit was modified, or (worse yet) a new file without any
227 content in the "git diff --stat" output.
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228
229 * When "--stat-count" hides a diffstat for binary contents, the total
230 number of added and removed lines at the bottom was computed
231 incorrectly.
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232
233 * When "--stat-count" hides a diffstat for unmerged paths, the total
234 number of affected files at the bottom of the "diff --stat" output
235 was computed incorrectly.
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236
237 * "diff --shortstat" miscounted the total number of affected files
238 when there were unmerged paths.
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239
240 * "update-ref -d --deref SYM" to delete a ref through a symbolic ref
241 that points to it did not remove it correctly.