1 Git v1.8.5 Release Notes
2 ========================
4 Backward compatibility notes (for Git 2.0)
5 ------------------------------------------
7 When "git push [$there]" does not say what to push, we have used the
8 traditional "matching" semantics so far (all your branches were sent
9 to the remote as long as there already are branches of the same name
10 over there). In Git 2.0, the default will change to the "simple"
11 semantics that pushes:
13 - only the current branch to the branch with the same name, and only
14 when the current branch is set to integrate with that remote
15 branch, if you are pushing to the same remote as you fetch from; or
17 - only the current branch to the branch with the same name, if you
18 are pushing to a remote that is not where you usually fetch from.
20 Use the user preference configuration variable "push.default" to
21 change this. If you are an old-timer who is used to the "matching"
22 semantics, you can set the variable to "matching" to keep the
23 traditional behaviour. If you want to live in the future early, you
24 can set it to "simple" today without waiting for Git 2.0.
26 When "git add -u" (and "git add -A") is run inside a subdirectory and
27 does not specify which paths to add on the command line, it
28 will operate on the entire tree in Git 2.0 for consistency
29 with "git commit -a" and other commands. There will be no
30 mechanism to make plain "git add -u" behave like "git add -u .".
31 Current users of "git add -u" (without a pathspec) should start
32 training their fingers to explicitly say "git add -u ."
33 before Git 2.0 comes. A warning is issued when these commands are
34 run without a pathspec and when you have local changes outside the
35 current directory, because the behaviour in Git 2.0 will be different
36 from today's version in such a situation.
38 In Git 2.0, "git add <path>" will behave as "git add -A <path>", so
39 that "git add dir/" will notice paths you removed from the directory
40 and record the removal. Versions before Git 2.0, including this
41 release, will keep ignoring removals, but the users who rely on this
42 behaviour are encouraged to start using "git add --ignore-removal <path>"
43 now before 2.0 is released.
45 The default prefix for "git svn" will change in Git 2.0. For a long
46 time, "git svn" created its remote-tracking branches directly under
47 refs/remotes, but it will place them under refs/remotes/origin/ unless
48 it is told otherwise with its --prefix option.
54 Foreign interfaces, subsystems and ports.
56 * "git-svn" used with SVN 1.8.0 when talking over https:// connection
57 dumped core due to a bug in the serf library that SVN uses. Work
58 it around on our side, even though the SVN side is being fixed.
60 * On MacOS X, we detected if the filesystem needs the "pre-composed
61 unicode strings" workaround, but did not automatically enable it.
64 * remote-hg remote helper misbehaved when interacting with a local Hg
65 repository relative to the home directory, e.g. "clone hg::~/there".
67 * imap-send ported to OS X uses Apple's security framework instead of
70 * Subversion 1.8.0 that was recently released breaks older subversion
71 clients coming over http/https in various ways.
73 * "git fast-import" treats an empty path given to "ls" as the root of
77 UI, Workflows & Features
79 * "git replace" helper no longer allows an object to be replaced with
80 another object of a different type to avoid confusion (you can
81 still manually craft such replacement using "git update-ref", as an
84 * "git status" no longer prints dirty status information for
85 submodules for which submodule.$name.ignore is set to "all".
87 * "git rebase -i" honours core.abbrev when preparing the insn sheet
90 * "git status" during a cherry-pick shows what original commit is
93 * Instead of typing four capital letters "HEAD", you can say "@" now,
96 * "git check-ignore" follows the same rule as "git add" and "git
97 status" in that the ignore/exclude mechanism does not take effect
98 on paths that are already tracked. With "--no-index" option, it
99 can be used to diagnose which paths that should have been ignored
100 have been mistakenly added to the index.
102 * Some irrelevant "advice" messages that are shared with "git status"
103 output have been removed from the commit log template.
105 * "update-refs" learnt a "--stdin" option to read multiple update
106 requests and perform them in an all-or-none fashion.
108 * Just like "make -C <directory>", "git -C <directory> ..." tells Git
109 to go there before doing anything else.
111 * Just like "git checkout -" knows to check out and "git merge -"
112 knows to merge the branch you were previously on, "git cherry-pick"
113 now understands "git cherry-pick -" to pick from the previous
116 * "git status" now omits the prefix to make its output a comment in a
117 commit log editor, which is not necessary for human consumption.
118 Scripts that parse the output of "git status" are advised to use
119 "git status --porcelain" instead, as its format is stable and easier
122 * Make "foo^{tag}" to peel a tag to itself, i.e. no-op., and fail if
123 "foo" is not a tag. "git rev-parse --verify v1.0^{tag}" would be
124 a more convenient way to say "test $(git cat-file -t v1.0) = tag".
126 * "git branch -v -v" (and "git status") did not distinguish among a
127 branch that does not build on any other branch, a branch that is in
128 sync with the branch it builds on, and a branch that is configured
129 to build on some other branch that no longer exists.
131 * A packfile that stores the same object more than once is broken and
132 will be rejected by "git index-pack" that is run when receiving
135 * Earlier we started rejecting an attempt to add 0{40} object name to
136 the index and to tree objects, but it sometimes is necessary to
137 allow so to be able to use tools like filter-branch to correct such
138 broken tree objects. "filter-branch" can again be used to to do
141 * "git config" did not provide a way to set or access numbers larger
142 than a native "int" on the platform; it now provides 64-bit signed
143 integers on all platforms.
145 * "git pull --rebase" always chose to do the bog-standard flattening
146 rebase. You can tell it to run "rebase --preserve-merges" by
147 setting "pull.rebase" configuration to "preserve".
149 * "git push --no-thin" actually disables the "thin pack transfer"
152 * Magic pathspecs like ":(icase)makefile" that matches both
153 Makefile and makefile can be used in more places.
155 * The "http.*" variables can now be specified per URL that the
156 configuration applies. For example,
160 [http "https://weak.example.com/"]
163 would flip http.sslVerify off only when talking to that specified
166 * "git mv A B" when moving a submodule A has been taught to
167 relocate its working tree and to adjust the paths in the
170 * "git blame" can now take more than one -L option to discover the
171 origin of multiple blocks of the lines.
173 * The http transport clients can optionally ask to save cookies
174 with http.savecookies configuration variable.
176 * "git push" learned a more fine grained control over a blunt
177 "--force" when requesting a non-fast-forward update with the
178 "--force-with-lease=<refname>:<expected object name>" option.
180 * "git diff --diff-filter=<classes of changes>" can now take
181 lowercase letters (e.g. "--diff-filter=d") to mean "show
182 everything but these classes". "git diff-files -q" is now a
183 deprecated synonym for "git diff-files --diff-filter=d".
185 * "git fetch" (hence "git pull" as well) learned to check
186 "fetch.prune" and "remote.*.prune" configuration variables and
187 to behave as if the "--prune" command line option was given.
189 * "git check-ignore -z" applied the NUL termination to both its input
190 (with --stdin) and its output, but "git check-attr -z" ignored the
191 option on the output side. Make both honor -z on the input and
192 output side the same way.
194 * "git whatchanged" may still be used by old timers, but mention of
195 it in documents meant for new users will only waste readers' time
196 wonderig what the difference is between it and "git log". Make it
197 less prominent in the general part of the documentation and explain
198 that it is merely a "git log" with different default behaviour in
202 Performance, Internal Implementation, etc.
204 * Build procedure for MSVC has been updated.
206 * If a build-time fallback is set to "cat" instead of "less", we
207 should apply the same "no subprocess or pipe" optimization as we
208 apply to user-supplied GIT_PAGER=cat.
210 * Many commands use --dashed-option as a operation mode selector
211 (e.g. "git tag --delete") that the user can use at most one
212 (e.g. "git tag --delete --verify" is a nonsense) and you cannot
213 negate (e.g. "git tag --no-delete" is a nonsense). parse-options
214 API learned a new OPT_CMDMODE macro to make it easier to implement
215 such a set of options.
217 * OPT_BOOLEAN() in parse-options API was misdesigned to be "counting
218 up" but many subcommands expect it to behave as "on/off". Update
219 them to use OPT_BOOL() which is a proper boolean.
221 * "git gc" exits early without doing a double-work when it detects
222 that another instance of itself is already running.
224 * Under memory pressure and/or file descriptor pressure, we used to
225 close pack windows that are not used and also closed filehandle to
226 an open but unused packfiles. These are now controlled separately
227 to better cope with the load.
229 Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups.
235 Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.8.4 in the maintenance
236 track are contained in this release (see release notes to them for
239 * "format-patch --from=<whom>" forgot to omit unnecessary in-body
240 from line, i.e. when <whom> is the same as the real author.
241 (merge 662cc30 jk/format-patch-from later to maint).
243 * "git shortlog" used to choke and die when there is a malformed
244 commit (e.g. missing authors); it now simply ignore such a commit
246 (merge cd4f09e jk/shortlog-tolerate-broken-commit later to maint).
248 * "git merge-recursive" did not parse its "--diff-algorithm=" command
249 line option correctly.
250 (merge 6562928 jk/diff-algo later to maint).
252 * When running "fetch -q", a long silence while the sender side
253 computes the set of objects to send can be mistaken by proxies as
254 dropped connection. The server side has been taught to send a
255 small empty messages to keep the connection alive.
256 (merge 115dedd jk/upload-pack-keepalive later to maint).
258 * "git rebase" had a portability regression in v1.8.4 to trigger a
259 bug in some BSD shell implementations.
260 (merge 99855dd mm/rebase-continue-freebsd-WB later to maint).
262 * "git branch --track" had a minor regression in v1.8.3.2 and later
263 that made it impossible to base your local work on anything but a
264 local branch of the upstream repository you are tracking from.
265 (merge b0f49ff jh/checkout-auto-tracking later to maint).
267 * When the webserver responds with "405 Method Not Allowed", "git
268 http-backend" should tell the client what methods are allowed with
270 (merge 9247be0 bc/http-backend-allow-405 later to maint).
272 * When there is no sufficient overlap between old and new history
273 during a "git fetch" into a shallow repository, objects that the
274 sending side knows the receiving end has were unnecessarily sent.
275 (merge f21d2a7 nd/fetch-into-shallow later to maint).
277 * "git cvsserver" computed the permission mode bits incorrectly for
279 (merge 1b48d56 jc/cvsserver-perm-bit-fix later to maint).
281 * When send-email comes up with an error message to die with upon
282 failure to start an SSL session, it tried to read the error string
284 (merge 6cb0c88 bc/send-email-ssl-die-message-fix later to maint).
286 * The implementation of "add -i" has a crippling code to work around
287 ActiveState Perl limitation but it by mistake also triggered on Git
288 for Windows where MSYS perl is used.
289 (merge df17e77 js/add-i-mingw later to maint).
291 * We made sure that we notice the user-supplied GIT_DIR is actually a
292 gitfile, but did not do the same when the default ".git" is a
294 (merge 487a2b7 nd/git-dir-pointing-at-gitfile later to maint).
296 * When an object is not found after checking the packfiles and then
297 loose object directory, read_sha1_file() re-checks the packfiles to
298 prevent racing with a concurrent repacker; teach the same logic to
300 (merge 45e8a74 jk/has-sha1-file-retry-packed later to maint).
302 * "git commit --author=$name", when $name is not in the canonical
303 "A. U. Thor <au.thor@example.xz>" format, looks for a matching name
304 from existing history, but did not consult mailmap to grab the
305 preferred author name.
306 (merge ea16794 ap/commit-author-mailmap later to maint).
308 * "git ls-files -k" needs to crawl only the part of the working tree
309 that may overlap the paths in the index to find killed files, but
310 shared code with the logic to find all the untracked files, which
311 made it unnecessarily inefficient.
312 (merge 680be04 jc/ls-files-killed-optim later to maint).
314 * The commit object names in the insn sheet that was prepared at the
315 beginning of "rebase -i" session can become ambiguous as the
316 rebasing progresses and the repository gains more commits. Make
317 sure the internal record is kept with full 40-hex object names.
318 (merge 75c6976 es/rebase-i-no-abbrev later to maint).
320 * "git rebase --preserve-merges" internally used the merge machinery
321 and as a side effect, left merge summary message in the log, but
322 when rebasing, there should not be a need for merge summary.
323 (merge a9f739c rt/rebase-p-no-merge-summary later to maint).
325 * A call to xread() was used without a loop around to cope with short
326 read in the codepath to stream new contents to a pack.
327 (merge e92527c js/xread-in-full later to maint).
329 * "git rebase -i" forgot that the comment character can be
330 configurable while reading its insn sheet.
331 (merge 7bca7af es/rebase-i-respect-core-commentchar later to maint).
333 * The mailmap support code read past the allocated buffer when the
334 mailmap file ended with an incomplete line.
335 (merge f972a16 jk/mailmap-incomplete-line later to maint).
337 * We used to send a large request to read(2)/write(2) as a single
338 system call, which was bad from the latency point of view when
339 the operation needs to be killed, and also triggered an error on
340 broken 64-bit systems that refuse to take more than 2GB read or
342 (merge a487916 sp/clip-read-write-to-8mb later to maint).
344 * "git fetch" that auto-followed tags incorrectly reused the
345 connection with Git-aware transport helper (like the sample "ext::"
346 helper shipped with Git).
347 (merge 0f73f8b jc/transport-do-not-use-connect-twice-in-fetch later to maint).
349 * "git log --full-diff -- <pathspec>" showed a huge diff for paths
350 outside the given <pathspec> for each commit, instead of showing
351 the change relative to the parent of the commit. "git reflog -p"
352 had a similar problem.
353 (merge 838f9a1 tr/log-full-diff-keep-true-parents later to maint).
355 * Setting submodule.*.path configuration variable to true (without
356 giving "= value") caused Git to segfault.
357 (merge 4b05440 jl/some-submodule-config-are-not-boolean later to maint).
359 * "git rebase -i" (there could be others, as the root cause is pretty
360 generic) fed a random, data dependeant string to 'echo' and
361 expects it to come out literally, corrupting its error message.
362 (merge 89b0230 mm/no-shell-escape-in-die-message later to maint).
364 * Some people still use rather old versions of bash, which cannot
365 grok some constructs like 'printf -v varname' the prompt and
366 completion code started to use recently.
367 (merge a44aa69 bc/completion-for-bash-3.0 later to maint).
369 * Code to read configuration from a blob object did not compile on
370 platforms with fgetc() etc. implemented as macros.
371 (merge 49d6cfa hv/config-from-blob later to maint-1.8.3).
373 * The recent "short-cut clone connectivity check" topic broke a
374 shallow repository when a fetch operation tries to auto-follow tags.
375 (merge 6da8bdc nd/fetch-pack-shallow-fix later to maint-1.8.3).