1 Git v1.8.1 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 * We used to have a workaround for a bug in ancient "less" that
31 causes it to exit without any output when the terminal is resized.
32 The bug has been fixed in "less" version 406 (June 2007), and the
33 workaround has been removed in this release.
35 * Some documentation pages that used to ship only in the plain text
36 format are now formatted in HTML as well.
38 * A new configuration variable "diff.context" can be used to
39 give the default number of context lines in the patch output, to
40 override the hardcoded default of 3 lines.
42 * "git format-patch" learned the "--notes=<ref>" option to give
43 notes for the commit after the three-dash lines in its output.
45 * "git log --grep=<pcre>" learned to honor the "grep.patterntype"
46 configuration set to "perl".
48 * "git replace -d <object>" now interprets <object>, instead of only
49 accepting full hex object name.
51 * "git rm $submodule" used to punt on removing a submodule working
52 tree to avoid losing the repository embedded in it. Because
53 recent git uses a mechanism to separate the submodule repository
54 from the submodule working tree, "git rm" learned to detect this
55 case and removes the submodule working tree when it is safe.
57 * "git submodule add" learned to add a new submodule at the same
58 path as the path where an unrelated submodule was bound to in an
59 existing revision via the "--name" option.
61 * "git submodule sync" learned the "--recursive" option.
63 * "git symbolic-ref" learned the "-d $symref" option to delete the
64 named symbolic ref, which is more intuitive way to spell it than
65 "update-ref -d --no-deref".
70 * "git cvsimport" can be told to record timezones (other than GMT)
71 per-author via its author info file.
73 * The remote helper interface to interact with subversion
74 repositories (one of the GSoC 2012 projects) has been merged.
77 Performance, Internal Implementation, etc.
79 * Compilation on Cygwin with newer header files are supported now.
81 * The logic to generate the initial advertisement from
82 "upload-pack" (what is invoked by "git fetch" on the other side
83 of the connection) to list what refs are available in the
84 repository has been optimized.
86 * The logic to find set of attributes that match a given path has
89 * Use preloadindex in "git diff-index" and "git update-index", which
90 has a nice speedup on systems with slow stat calls (and even on
94 Also contains minor documentation updates and code clean-ups.
100 Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.8.0 in the maintenance
101 track are contained in this release (see release notes to them for
104 * The configuration parser had an unnecessary hardcoded limit on
105 variable names that was not checked consistently.
106 (merge 0971e99 bw/config-lift-variable-name-length-limit later to maint).
108 * The "say" function in the test scaffolding incorrectly allowed
109 "echo" to interpret "\a" as if it were a C-string asking for a
111 (merge 7bc0911 jc/test-say-color-avoid-echo-escape later to maint).
113 * "git mergetool" feeds /dev/null as a common ancestor when dealing
114 with an add/add conflict, but p4merge backend cannot handle
115 it. Work it around by passing a temporary empty file.
116 (merge 3facc60 da/mergetools-p4 later to maint).
118 * "git log -F -E --grep='<ere>'" failed to use the given <ere>
119 pattern as extended regular expression, and instead looked for the
121 (merge 727b6fc jc/grep-pcre-loose-ends~1 later to maint).
123 * "git grep -e pattern <tree>" asked the attribute system to read
124 "<tree>:.gitattributes" file in the working tree, which was
126 (merge 55c6168 nd/grep-true-path later to maint).
128 * A symbolic ref refs/heads/SYM was not correctly removed with "git
129 branch -d SYM"; the command removed the ref pointed by SYM
131 (merge 13baa9f rs/branch-del-symref later to maint).
133 * Update "remote tracking branch" in the documentation to
134 "remote-tracking branch".
135 (merge a6d3bde mm/maint-doc-remote-tracking later to maint).
137 * "git pull --rebase" run while the HEAD is detached tried to find
138 the upstream branch of the detached HEAD (which by definition
139 does not exist) and emitted unnecessary error messages.
140 (merge e980765 ph/pull-rebase-detached later to maint).
142 * The refs/replace hierarchy was not mentioned in the
143 repository-layout docs.
144 (merge 11fbe18 po/maint-refs-replace-docs later to maint).
146 * Various rfc2047 quoting issues around a non-ASCII name on the
147 From: line in the output from format-patch have been corrected.
148 (merge 25dc8da js/format-2047 later to maint).
150 * Sometimes curl_multi_timeout() function suggested a wrong timeout
151 value when there is no file descriptor to wait on and the http
152 transport ended up sleeping for minutes in select(2) system call.
153 A workaround has been added for this.
154 (merge 7202b81 sz/maint-curl-multi-timeout later to maint).
156 * For a fetch refspec (or the result of applying wildcard on one),
157 we always want the RHS to map to something inside "refs/"
158 hierarchy, but the logic to check it was not exactly right.
159 (merge 5c08c1f jc/maint-fetch-tighten-refname-check later to maint).
161 * "git diff -G<pattern>" did not honor textconv filter when looking
163 (merge b1c2f57 jk/maint-diff-grep-textconv later to maint).
165 * Some HTTP servers ask for auth only during the actual packing phase
166 (not in ls-remote phase); this is not really a recommended
167 configuration, but the clients used to fail to authenticate with
169 (merge 2e736fd jk/maint-http-half-auth-fetch later to maint).
171 * "git p4" used to try expanding malformed "$keyword$" that spans
172 across multiple lines.
173 (merge 6b2bf41 pw/maint-p4-rcs-expansion-newline later to maint).
175 * Syntax highlighting in "gitweb" was not quite working.
176 (merge 048b399 rh/maint-gitweb-highlight-ext later to maint).
178 * RSS feed from "gitweb" had a xss hole in its title output.
179 (merge 0f0ecf6 jk/maint-gitweb-xss later to maint).
181 * "git config --path $key" segfaulted on "[section] key" (a boolean
182 "true" spelled without "=", not "[section] key = true").
183 (merge 962c38e cn/config-missing-path later to maint).
185 * "git checkout -b foo" while on an unborn branch did not say
186 "Switched to a new branch 'foo'" like other cases.
187 (merge afa8c07 jk/checkout-out-of-unborn later to maint).