1 Git v1.8.0 Release Notes
2 ========================
4 Backward compatibility notes
5 ----------------------------
7 In the next major release (not *this* one), we will change the
8 behavior of the "git push" command.
10 When "git push [$there]" does not say what to push, we have used the
11 traditional "matching" semantics so far (all your branches were sent
12 to the remote as long as there already are branches of the same name
13 over there). We will use the "simple" semantics that pushes the
14 current branch to the branch with the same name, only when the current
15 branch is set to integrate with that remote branch. There is a user
16 preference configuration variable "push.default" to change this, and
17 "git push" will warn about the upcoming change until you set this
18 variable in this release.
20 "git branch --set-upstream" is deprecated and may be removed in a
21 relatively distant future. "git branch [-u|--set-upstream-to]" has
22 been introduced with a saner order of arguments.
28 UI, Workflows & Features
30 * A credential helper for Win32 to allow access to the keychain of
31 the logged-in user has been added.
33 * An initial port to HP NonStop.
35 * A credential helper to allow access to the Gnome keyring has been
38 * When "git am" sanitizes the "Subject:" line, we strip the prefix from
39 "Re: subject" and also from a less common "re: subject", but left
40 the even less common "RE: subject" intact. Now we strip that too.
42 * It was tempting to say "git branch --set-upstream origin/master",
43 but that tells Git to arrange the local branch "origin/master" to
44 integrate with the currently checked out branch, which is highly
45 unlikely what the user meant. The option is deprecated; use the
46 new "--set-upstream-to" (with a short-and-sweet "-u") option
49 * "git cherry-pick" learned the "--allow-empty-message" option to
50 allow it to replay a commit without any log message.
52 * After "git cherry-pick -s" gave control back to the user asking
53 help to resolve conflicts, concluding "git commit" used to need to
54 be run with "-s" if the user wants to sign it off; now the command
55 leaves the sign-off line in the log template.
57 * "git daemon" learned the "--access-hook" option to allow an
58 external command to decline service based on the client address,
61 * "git difftool --dir-diff" learned to use symbolic links to prepare
62 a temporary copy of the working tree when available.
64 * "git grep" learned to use a non-standard pattern type by default if
65 a configuration variable tells it to.
67 * Accumulated updates to "git gui" has been merged.
69 * "git log -g" learned the "--grep-reflog=<pattern>" option to limit
70 its output to commits with a reflog message that matches the given
73 * "git merge-base" learned the "--is-ancestor A B" option to tell if A is
74 an ancestor of B. The result is indicated by its exit status code.
76 * "git mergetool" now allows users to override the actual command used
77 with the mergetool.$name.cmd configuration variable even for built-in
80 * "git rebase -i" learned the "--edit-todo" option to open an editor
81 to edit the instruction sheet.
86 * "git svn" has been updated to work with SVN 1.7.
88 * "git p4" learned the "--conflicts" option to specify what to do when
89 encountering a conflict during "p4 submit".
92 Performance, Internal Implementation, etc.
94 * Git ships with a fall-back regexp implementation for platforms with
95 buggy regexp library, but it was easy for people to keep using their
96 platform regexp by mistake. A new test has been added to check this.
98 * The "check-docs" build target has been updated and greatly
101 * The test suite is run under MALLOC_CHECK_ when running with a glibc
102 that supports the feature.
104 * The documentation in the TeXinfo format was using indented output
105 for materials meant to be examples that are better typeset in
108 * Compatibility wrapper around some mkdir(2) implementations that
109 reject parameters with trailing slash has been introduced.
111 * Compatibility wrapper for systems that lack usable setitimer() has
114 * The option parsing of "git checkout" had error checking, dwim and
115 defaulting missing options, all mixed in the code, and issuing an
116 appropriate error message with useful context was getting harder.
117 The code has been reorganized to allow giving a proper diagnosis
118 when the user says "git checkout -b -t foo bar" (e.g. "-t" is not a
119 good name for a branch).
121 * Many internal uses of a "git merge-base" equivalent were only to see
122 if one commit fast-forwards to the other, which did not need the
123 full set of merge bases to be computed. They have been updated to
124 use less expensive checks.
126 * The heuristics to detect and silently convert latin1 to utf8 when
127 we were told to use utf-8 in the log message has been transplanted
128 from "mailinfo" to "commit" and "commit-tree".
130 * Messages given by "git <subcommand> -h" from many subcommands have
131 been marked for translation.
134 Also contains minor documentation updates and code clean-ups.
140 Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.7.12 in the
141 maintenance track are contained in this release (see release notes
142 to them for details).
144 * The attribute system may be asked for a path that itself or its
145 leading directories no longer exists in the working tree, and it is
146 fine if we cannot open .gitattribute file in such a case. Failure
147 to open per-directory .gitattributes with error status other than
148 ENOENT and ENOTDIR should be diagnosed, but it wasn't.
150 * When looking for $HOME/.gitconfig etc., it is OK if we cannot read
151 them because they do not exist, but we did not diagnose existing
152 files that we cannot read.
154 * When "git am" is fed an input that has multiple "Content-type: ..."
155 header, it did not grok charset= attribute correctly.
157 * "git am" mishandled a patch attached as application/octet-stream
158 (e.g. not text/*); Content-Transfer-Encoding (e.g. base64) was not
161 * "git blame MAKEFILE" run in a history that has "Makefile" but not
162 "MAKEFILE" should say "No such file MAKEFILE in HEAD", but got
163 confused on a case insensitive filesystem and failed to do so.
165 * Even during a conflicted merge, "git blame $path" always meant to
166 blame uncommitted changes to the "working tree" version; make it
167 more useful by showing cleanly merged parts as coming from the other
168 branch that is being merged.
170 * It was unclear in the documentation for "git blame" that it is
171 unnecessary for users to use the "--follow" option.
173 * Output from "git branch -v" contains "(no branch)" that could be
174 localized, but the code to align it along with the names of
175 branches was counting in bytes, not in display columns.
177 * "git cherry-pick A C B" used to replay changes in A and then B and
178 then C if these three commits had committer timestamps in that
179 order, which is not what the user who said "A C B" naturally
182 * A repository created with "git clone --single" had its fetch
183 refspecs set up just like a clone without "--single", leading the
184 subsequent "git fetch" to slurp all the other branches, defeating
185 the whole point of specifying "only this branch".
187 * Documentation talked about "first line of commit log" when it meant
188 the title of the commit. The description was clarified by defining
189 how the title is decided and rewording the casual mention of "first
192 * "git cvsimport" did not thoroughly cleanse tag names that it
193 inferred from the names of the tags it obtained from CVS, which
194 caused "git tag" to barf and stop the import in the middle.
196 * Earlier we made the diffstat summary line that shows the number of
197 lines added/deleted localizable, but it was found irritating having
198 to see them in various languages on a list whose discussion language
199 is English, and this change has been reverted.
201 * "git fetch --all", when passed "--no-tags", did not honor the
202 "--no-tags" option while fetching from individual remotes (the same
203 issue existed with "--tags", but the combination "--all --tags" makes
204 much less sense than "--all --no-tags").
206 * "git fetch" over http had an old workaround for an unlikely server
207 misconfiguration; it turns out that this hurts debuggability of the
208 configuration in general, and has been reverted.
210 * "git fetch" over http advertised that it supports "deflate", which
211 is much less common, and did not advertise the more common "gzip" on
212 its Accept-Encoding header.
214 * "git fetch" over the dumb-http revision walker could segfault when
215 curl's multi interface was used.
217 * "git gc --auto" notified the user that auto-packing has triggered
218 even under the "--quiet" option.
220 * After "gitk" showed the contents of a tag, neither "Reread
221 references" nor "Reload" updated what is shown as the
222 contents of it when the user overwrote the tag with "git tag -f".
224 * "git log --all-match --grep=A --grep=B" ought to show commits that
225 mention both A and B, but when these three options are used with
226 --author or --committer, it showed commits that mention either A or
229 * The "-Xours" backend option to "git merge -s recursive" was ignored
232 * "git p4", when "--use-client-spec" and "--detect-branches" are used
233 together, misdetected branches.
235 * "git receive-pack" (the counterpart to "git push") did not give
236 progress output while processing objects it received to the user
237 when run over the smart-http protocol.
239 * When you misspell the command name you give to the "exec" action in
240 the "git rebase -i" instruction sheet you were told that 'rebase' is not a
241 git subcommand from "git rebase --continue".
243 * The subcommand in "git remote" to remove a defined remote was
244 "rm" and the command did not take a fully-spelled "remove".
246 * The interactive prompt that "git send-email" gives was error prone. It
247 asked "What e-mail address do you want to use?" with the address it
248 guessed (correctly) the user would want to use in its prompt,
249 tempting the user to say "y". But the response was taken as "No,
250 please use 'y' as the e-mail address instead", which is most
251 certainly not what the user meant.
253 * "git show --format='%ci'" did not give the timestamp correctly for
254 commits created without human readable name on the "committer" line.
256 * "git show --quiet" ought to be a synonym for "git show -s", but
259 * "git submodule frotz" was not diagnosed as "frotz" being an unknown
260 subcommand to "git submodule"; the user instead got a complaint
261 that "git submodule status" was run with an unknown path "frotz".
263 * "git status" honored the ignore=dirty settings in .gitmodules but
266 * "gitweb" did not give the correct committer timezone in its feed
267 output due to a typo.
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