1 Git v1.6.6 Release Notes
2 ========================
4 Notes on behaviour change
5 -------------------------
7 * In this release, "git fsck" defaults to "git fsck --full" and
8 checks packfiles, and because of this it will take much longer to
9 complete than before. If you prefer a quicker check only on loose
10 objects (the old default), you can say "git fsck --no-full". This
11 has been supported by 1.5.4 and newer versions of git, so it is
12 safe to write it in your script even if you use slightly older git
13 on some of your machines.
15 Preparing yourselves for compatibility issues in 1.7.0
16 ------------------------------------------------------
18 In git 1.7.0, which is planned to be the release after 1.6.6, there will
19 be a handful of behaviour changes that will break backward compatibility.
21 These changes were discussed long time ago and existing behaviours have
22 been identified as more problematic to the userbase than keeping them for
23 the sake of backward compatibility.
25 When necessary, a transition strategy for existing users has been designed
26 not to force them running around setting configuration variables and
27 updating their scripts in order to either keep the traditional behaviour
28 or adjust to the new behaviour, on the day their sysadmin decides to install
29 the new version of git. When we switched from "git-foo" to "git foo" in
30 1.6.0, even though the change had been advertised and the transition
31 guide had been provided for a very long time, the users procrastinated
32 during the entire transition period, and ended up panicking on the day
33 their sysadmins updated their git installation. We are trying to avoid
34 repeating that unpleasantness in the 1.7.0 release.
36 For changes decided to be in 1.7.0, commands that will be affected
37 have been much louder to strongly discourage such procrastination, and
38 they continue to be in this release. If you have been using recent
39 versions of git, you would have seen warnings issued when you used
40 features whose behaviour will change, with a clear instruction on how
41 to keep the existing behaviour if you want to. You hopefully are
42 already well prepared.
44 Of course, we have also been giving "this and that will change in
45 1.7.0; prepare yourselves" warnings in the release notes and
46 announcement messages for the past few releases. Let's see how well
47 users will fare this time.
49 * "git push" into a branch that is currently checked out (i.e. pointed by
50 HEAD in a repository that is not bare) will be refused by default.
52 Similarly, "git push $there :$killed" to delete the branch $killed
53 in a remote repository $there, when $killed branch is the current
54 branch pointed at by its HEAD, will be refused by default.
56 Setting the configuration variables receive.denyCurrentBranch and
57 receive.denyDeleteCurrent to 'ignore' in the receiving repository
58 can be used to override these safety features. Versions of git
59 since 1.6.2 have issued a loud warning when you tried to do these
60 operations without setting the configuration, so repositories of
61 people who still need to be able to perform such a push should
62 already have been future proofed.
66 http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitFaq#non-bare
67 http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/107758/focus=108007
69 for more details on the reason why this change is needed and the
70 transition process that already took place so far.
72 * "git send-email" will not make deep threads by default when sending a
73 patch series with more than two messages. All messages will be sent
74 as a reply to the first message, i.e. cover letter. Git 1.6.6 (this
75 release) will issue a warning about the upcoming default change, when
76 it uses the traditional "deep threading" behaviour as the built-in
77 default. To squelch the warning but still use the "deep threading"
78 behaviour, give --chain-reply-to option or set sendemail.chainreplyto
81 It has been possible to configure send-email to send "shallow thread"
82 by setting sendemail.chainreplyto configuration variable to false.
83 The only thing 1.7.0 release will do is to change the default when
84 you haven't configured that variable.
86 * "git status" will not be "git commit --dry-run". This change does not
87 affect you if you run the command without pathspec.
89 Nobody sane found the current behaviour of "git status Makefile" useful
90 nor meaningful, and it confused users. "git commit --dry-run" has been
91 provided as a way to get the current behaviour of this command since
94 * "git diff" traditionally treated various "ignore whitespace" options
95 only as a way to filter the patch output. "git diff --exit-code -b"
96 exited with non-zero status even if all changes were about changing the
97 amount of whitespace and nothing else. and "git diff -b" showed the
98 "diff --git" header line for such a change without patch text.
100 In 1.7.0, the "ignore whitespaces" will affect the semantics of the
101 diff operation itself. A change that does not affect anything but
102 whitespaces will be reported with zero exit status when run with
103 --exit-code, and there will not be "diff --git" header for such a
112 * various gitk updates including use of themed widgets under Tk 8.5,
113 Japanese translation, a fix to a bug when running "gui blame" from
116 * various git-gui updates including new translations, wm states fixes,
117 Tk bug workaround after quitting, improved heuristics to trigger gc,
120 * various git-svn updates.
122 * "git fetch" over http learned a new mode that is different from the
123 traditional "dumb commit walker".
127 * imap-send can be built on mingw port.
131 * "git diff -B" has smaller memory footprint.
133 (usability, bells and whistles)
135 * The object replace mechanism can be bypassed with --no-replace-objects
136 global option given to the "git" program.
138 * In configuration files, a few variables that name paths can begin with ~/
139 and ~username/ and they are expanded as expected.
141 * "git subcmd -h" now shows short usage help for many more subcommands.
143 * "git bisect reset" can reset to an arbitrary commit.
145 * "git checkout frotz" when there is no local branch "frotz" but there
146 is only one remote tracking branch "frotz" is taken as a request to
147 start the named branch at the corresponding remote tracking branch.
149 * "git commit -c/-C/--amend" can be told with a new "--reset-author" option
150 to ignore authorship information in the commit it is taking the message
153 * "git describe" can be told to add "-dirty" suffix with "--dirty" option.
155 * "git diff" learned --submodule option to show a list of one-line logs
156 instead of differences between the commit object names.
158 * "git diff" learned to honor diff.color.func configuration to paint
159 function name hint printed on the hunk header "@@ -j,k +l,m @@" line
160 in the specified color.
162 * "git fetch" learned --all and --multiple options, to run fetch from
163 many repositories, and --prune option to remove remote tracking
164 branches that went stale. These make "git remote update" and "git
165 remote prune" less necessary (there is no plan to remove "remote
166 update" nor "remote prune", though).
168 * "git fsck" by default checks the packfiles (i.e. "--full" is the
169 default); you can turn it off with "git fsck --no-full".
171 * "git grep" can use -F (fixed strings) and -i (ignore case) together.
173 * import-tars contributed fast-import frontend learned more types of
176 * "git instaweb" knows how to talk with mod_cgid to apache2.
178 * "git log --decorate" shows the location of HEAD as well.
180 * "git log" and "git rev-list" learned to take revs and pathspecs from
181 the standard input with the new "--stdin" option.
183 * "--pretty=format" option to "log" family of commands learned:
185 . to wrap text with the "%w()" specifier.
186 . to show reflog information with "%g[sdD]" specifier.
188 * "git notes" command to annotate existing commits.
190 * "git merge" (and "git pull") learned --ff-only option to make it fail
191 if the merge does not result in a fast-forward.
193 * "git mergetool" learned to use p4merge.
195 * "git rebase -i" learned "reword" that acts like "edit" but immediately
196 starts an editor to tweak the log message without returning control to
197 the shell, which is done by "edit" to give an opportunity to tweak the
200 * "git send-email" can be told with "--envelope-sender=auto" to use the
201 same address as "From:" address as the envelope sender address.
203 * "git send-email" will issue a warning when it defaults to the
204 --chain-reply-to behaviour without being told by the user and
205 instructs to prepare for the change of the default in 1.7.0 release.
207 * In "git submodule add <repository> <path>", <path> is now optional and
208 inferred from <repository> the same way "git clone <repository>" does.
210 * "git svn" learned to read SVN 1.5+ and SVK merge tickets.
212 * "git svn" learned to recreate empty directories tracked only by SVN.
214 * "gitweb" can optionally render its "blame" output incrementally (this
215 requires JavaScript on the client side).
217 * Author names shown in gitweb output are links to search commits by the
223 All of the fixes in v1.6.5.X maintenance series are included in this
224 release, unless otherwise noted.