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