Update draft release notes to 1.6.6 before merging topics for -rc1

[git/vmiklos.git] / Documentation / RelNotes-1.6.6.txt

Git v1.6.6 Release Notes
========================

Notes on behaviour change
-------------------------

 * In this release, "git fsck" defaults to "git fsck --full" and
   checks packfiles, and because of this it will take much longer to
   complete than before.  If you prefer a quicker check only on loose
   objects (the old default), you can say "git fsck --no-full".  This
   has been supported by 1.5.4 and newer versions of git, so it is
   safe to write it in your script even if you use slightly older git
   on some of your machines.

Preparing yourselves for compatibility issues in 1.7.0
------------------------------------------------------

In git 1.7.0, which is planned to be the release after 1.6.6, there will
be a handful of behaviour changes that will break backward compatibility.

These changes were discussed long time ago and existing behaviours have
been identified as more problematic to the userbase than keeping them for
the sake of backward compatibility.

When necessary, transition strategy for existing users has been designed
not to force them running around setting configuration variables and
updating their scripts in order to keep the traditional behaviour on the
day their sysadmin decides to install the new version of git.  When we
switched from "git-foo" to "git foo" in 1.6.0, even though the change had
been advertised and the transition guide had been provided for a very long
time, the users procrastinated during the entire transtion period, and
ended up panicking on the day their sysadmins updated their git.

For changes decided to be in 1.7.0, we have been much louder to strongly
discourage such procrastination.  If you have been using recent versions
of git, you would have already seen warnings issued when you exercised
features whose behaviour will change, with the instruction on how to keep
the existing behaviour if you choose to.  You hopefully should be well
prepared already.

Of course, we have also given "this and that will change in 1.7.0; prepare
yourselves" warnings in the release notes and announcement messages.
Let's see how well users will fare this time.

 * "git push" into a branch that is currently checked out (i.e. pointed by
   HEAD in a repository that is not bare) will be refused by default.

   Similarly, "git push $there :$killed" to delete the branch $killed
   in a remote repository $there, when $killed branch is the current
   branch pointed at by its HEAD, will be refused by default.

   Setting the configuration variables receive.denyCurrentBranch and
   receive.denyDeleteCurrent to 'ignore' in the receiving repository
   can be used to override these safety features.  Versions of git
   since 1.6.2 have issued a loud warning when you tried to do them
   without setting the configuration, so repositories of people who
   still need to be able to perform such a push should already been
   future proofed.

   Please refer to:

   http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitFaq#non-bare
   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/107758/focus=108007

   for more details on the reason why this change is needed and the
   transition process that already took place so far.

 * "git send-email" will not make deep threads by default when sending a
   patch series with more than two messages.  All messages will be sent as
   a reply to the first message, i.e. cover letter.  It has been possible
   to configure send-email to do this by setting sendemail.chainreplyto
   configuration variable to false.  The only thing the new release will
   do is to change the default when you haven't configured that variable.

 * "git status" will not be "git commit --dry-run".  This change does not
   affect you if you run the command without pathspec.

   Nobody sane found the current behaviour of "git status Makefile" useful
   nor meaningful, and it confused users.  "git commit --dry-run" has been
   provided as a way to get the current behaviour of this command since
   1.6.5.

 * "git diff" traditionally treated various "ignore whitespace" options
   only as a way to filter the patch output.  "git diff --exit-code -b"
   exited with non-zero status even if all changes were about changing the
   ammount of whitespace and nothing else.  and "git diff -b" showed the
   "diff --git" header line for such a change without patch text.

   In 1.7.0, the "ignore whitespaces" will affect the semantics of the
   diff operation itself.  A change that does not affect anything but
   whitespaces will be reported with zero exit status when run with
   --exit-code, and there will not be "diff --git" header for such a
   change.


Updates since v1.6.5
--------------------

(subsystems)

 * various git-gui updates including new translations, wm states, etc.

 * git-svn updates.

 * "git fetch" over http learned a new mode that is different from the
   traditional "dumb commit walker".

(portability)

 * imap-send can be built on mingw port.

(performance)

 * "git diff -B" has smaller memory footprint.

(usability, bells and whistles)

 * The object replace mechanism can be bypassed with --no-replace-objects
   global option given to the "git" program.

 * In configuration files, a few variables that name paths can begin with ~/
   and ~username/ and they are expanded as expected.

 * "git subcmd -h" now shows short usage help for many more subcommands.

 * "git bisect reset" can reset to an arbitrary commit.

 * "git checkout frotz" when there is no local branch "frotz" but there
   is only one remote tracking branch "frotz" is taken as a request to
   start the named branch at the corresponding remote tracking branch.

 * "git describe" can be told to add "-dirty" suffix with "--dirty" option.

 * "git diff" learned --submodule option to show a list of one-line logs
   instead of differences between the commit object names.

 * "git fetch" learned --all and --multiple options, to run fetch from
   many repositories, and --prune option to remove remote tracking
   branches that went stale.  These make "git remote update" and "git
   remote prune" less necessary (there is no plan to remove "remote
   update" nor "remote prune", though).

 * "git fsck" by default checks the packfiles (i.e. "--full" is the
   default); you can turn it off with "git fsck --no-full".

 * "git grep" can use -F (fixed strings) and -i (ignore case) together.

 * import-tars contributed fast-import frontend learned more types of
   compressed tarballs.

 * "git instaweb" knows how to talk with mod_cgid to apache2.

 * "git log --decorate" shows the location of HEAD as well.

 * "git log" and "git rev-list" learned to take revs and pathspecs from
   the standard input with the new "--stdin" option.

 * "--pretty=format" option to "log" family of commands learned:

   . to wrap text with the "%w()" specifier.
   . to show reflog information with "%g[sdD]" specifier.

 * "git notes" command to annotate existing commits.

 * "git merge" (and "git pull") learned --ff-only option to make it fail
   if the merge does not result in a fast-forward.

 * "git mergetool" learned to use p4merge.

 * "git rebase -i" learned "reword" that acts like "edit" but immediately
   starts an editor to tweak the log message without returning control to
   the shell, which is done by "edit" to give an opportunity to tweak the
   contents.

 * In "git submodule add <repository> <path>", <path> is now optional and
   inferred from <repository> the same way "git clone <repository>" does.

 * "git svn" learned to read SVN 1.5+ and SVK merge tickets.

 * Author names shown in gitweb output are links to search commits by the
   author.


(developers)

Fixes since v1.6.5
------------------

All of the fixes in v1.6.5.X maintenance series are included in this
release, unless otherwise noted.

---
exec >/var/tmp/1
echo O=$(git describe master)
O=v1.6.6-rc0-62-g7fc9d15
git shortlog --no-merges $O..master --not maint