1Git v1.9 Release Notes 2====================== 3 4Backward compatibility notes 5---------------------------- 6 7"git submodule foreach $cmd $args" used to treat "$cmd $args" the same 8way "ssh" did, concatenating them into a single string and letting the 9shell unquote. Careless users who forget to sufficiently quote $args 10gets their argument split at $IFS whitespaces by the shell, and got 11unexpected results due to this. Starting from this release, the 12command line is passed directly to the shell, if it has an argument. 13 14Read-only support for experimental loose-object format, in which users 15could optionally choose to write in their loose objects for a short 16while between v1.4.3 to v1.5.3 era, has been dropped. 17 18The meanings of "--tags" option to "git fetch" has changed; the 19command fetches tags _in addition to_ what are fetched by the same 20command line without the option. 21 22The way "git push $there $what" interprets $what part given on the 23command line, when it does not have a colon that explicitly tells us 24what ref at the $there repository is to be updated, has been enhanced. 25 26A handful of ancient commands that have long been deprecated are 27finally gone (repo-config, tar-tree, lost-found, and peek-remote). 28 29 30Backward compatibility notes (for Git 2.0) 31------------------------------------------ 32 33When "git push [$there]" does not say what to push, we have used the 34traditional "matching" semantics so far (all your branches were sent 35to the remote as long as there already are branches of the same name 36over there). In Git 2.0, the default will change to the "simple" 37semantics, which pushes: 38 39 - only the current branch to the branch with the same name, and only 40 when the current branch is set to integrate with that remote 41 branch, if you are pushing to the same remote as you fetch from; or 42 43 - only the current branch to the branch with the same name, if you 44 are pushing to a remote that is not where you usually fetch from. 45 46Use the user preference configuration variable "push.default" to 47change this. If you are an old-timer who is used to the "matching" 48semantics, you can set the variable to "matching" to keep the 49traditional behaviour. If you want to live in the future early, you 50can set it to "simple" today without waiting for Git 2.0. 51 52When "git add -u" (and "git add -A") is run inside a subdirectory and 53does not specify which paths to add on the command line, it 54will operate on the entire tree in Git 2.0 for consistency 55with "git commit -a" and other commands. There will be no 56mechanism to make plain "git add -u" behave like "git add -u .". 57Current users of "git add -u" (without a pathspec) should start 58training their fingers to explicitly say "git add -u ." 59before Git 2.0 comes. A warning is issued when these commands are 60run without a pathspec and when you have local changes outside the 61current directory, because the behaviour in Git 2.0 will be different 62from today's version in such a situation. 63 64In Git 2.0, "git add <path>" will behave as "git add -A <path>", so 65that "git add dir/" will notice paths you removed from the directory 66and record the removal. Versions before Git 2.0, including this 67release, will keep ignoring removals, but the users who rely on this 68behaviour are encouraged to start using "git add --ignore-removal <path>" 69now before 2.0 is released. 70 71The default prefix for "git svn" will change in Git 2.0. For a long 72time, "git svn" created its remote-tracking branches directly under 73refs/remotes, but it will place them under refs/remotes/origin/ unless 74it is told otherwise with its --prefix option. 75 76 77Updates since v1.8.5 78-------------------- 79 80Foreign interfaces, subsystems and ports. 81 82 * The HTTP transport, when talking GSS-Negotiate, uses "100 83 Continue" response to avoid having to rewind and resend a large 84 payload, which may not be always doable. 85 86 * Various bugfixes to remote-bzr and remote-hg (in contrib/). 87 88 * The build procedure is aware of MirBSD now. 89 90 91UI, Workflows & Features 92 93 * Just like we give a reasonable default for "less" via the LESS 94 environment variable, we now specify a reasonable default for "lv" 95 via the "LV" environment variable when spawning the pager. 96 97 * Two-level configuration variable names in "branch.*" and "remote.*" 98 hierarchies, whose variables are predominantly three-level, were 99 not completed by hitting a <TAB> in bash and zsh completions. 100 101 * Fetching 'frotz' branch with "git fetch", while 'frotz/nitfol' 102 remote-tracking branch from an earlier fetch was still there, would 103 error out, primarily because the command was not told that it is 104 allowed to lose any information on our side. "git fetch --prune" 105 now can be used to remove 'frotz/nitfol' to make room to fetch and 106 store 'frotz' remote-tracking branch. 107 108 * "diff.orderfile=<file>" configuration variable can be used to 109 pretend as if the "-O<file>" option were given from the command 110 line of "git diff", etc. 111 112 * The negative pathspec syntax allows "git log -- . ':!dir'" to tell 113 us "I am interested in everything but 'dir' directory". 114 115 * "git difftool" shows how many different paths there are in total, 116 and how many of them have been shown so far, to indicate progress. 117 118 * "git push origin master" used to push our 'master' branch to update 119 the 'master' branch at the 'origin' repository. This has been 120 enhanced to use the same ref mapping "git push origin" would use to 121 determine what ref at the 'origin' to be updated with our 'master'. 122 For example, with this configuration 123 124 [remote "origin"] 125 push = refs/heads/*:refs/review/* 126 127 that would cause "git push origin" to push out our local branches 128 to corresponding refs under refs/review/ hierarchy at 'origin', 129 "git push origin master" would update 'refs/review/master' over 130 there. Alternatively, if push.default is set to 'upstream' and our 131 'master' is set to integrate with 'topic' from the 'origin' branch, 132 running "git push origin" while on our 'master' would update their 133 'topic' branch, and running "git push origin master" while on any 134 of our branches does the same. 135 136 * "gitweb" learned to treat ref hierarchies other than refs/heads as 137 if they are additional branch namespaces (e.g. refs/changes/ in 138 Gerrit). 139 140 * "git for-each-ref --format=..." learned a few formatting directives; 141 e.g. "%(color:red)%(HEAD)%(color:reset) %(refname:short) %(subject)". 142 143 * The command string given to "git submodule foreach" is passed 144 directly to the shell, without being eval'ed. This is a backward 145 incompatible change that may break existing users. 146 147 * "git log" and friends learned the "--exclude=<glob>" option, to 148 allow people to say "list history of all branches except those that 149 match this pattern" with "git log --exclude='*/*' --branches". 150 151 * "git rev-parse --parseopt" learned a new "--stuck-long" option to 152 help scripts parse options with an optional parameter. 153 154 * The "--tags" option to "git fetch" no longer tells the command to 155 fetch _only_ the tags. It instead fetches tags _in addition to_ 156 what are fetched by the same command line without the option. 157 158 159Performance, Internal Implementation, etc. 160 161 * When parsing a 40-hex string into the object name, the string is 162 checked to see if it can be interpreted as a ref so that a warning 163 can be given for ambiguity. The code kicked in even when the 164 core.warnambiguousrefs is set to false to squelch this warning, in 165 which case the cycles spent to look at the ref namespace were an 166 expensive no-op, as the result was discarded without being used. 167 168 * The naming convention of the packfiles has been updated; it used to 169 be based on the enumeration of names of the objects that are 170 contained in the pack, but now it also depends on how the packed 171 result is represented---packing the same set of objects using 172 different settings (or delta order) would produce a pack with 173 different name. 174 175 * "git diff --no-index" mode used to unnecessarily attempt to read 176 the index when there is one. 177 178 * The deprecated parse-options macro OPT_BOOLEAN has been removed; 179 use OPT_BOOL or OPT_COUNTUP in new code. 180 181 * A few duplicate implementations of prefix/suffix string comparison 182 functions have been unified to starts_with() and ends_with(). 183 184 * The new PERLLIB_EXTRA makefile variable can be used to specify 185 additional directories Perl modules (e.g. the ones necessary to run 186 git-svn) are installed on the platform when building. 187 188 * "git merge-base" learned the "--fork-point" mode, that implements 189 the same logic used in "git pull --rebase" to find a suitable fork 190 point out of the reflog entries for the remote-tracking branch the 191 work has been based on. "git rebase" has the same logic that can be 192 triggered with the "--fork-point" option. 193 194 * A third-party "receive-pack" (the responder to "git push") can 195 advertise the "no-thin" capability to tell "git push" not to use 196 the thin-pack optimization. Our receive-pack has always been 197 capable of accepting and fattening a thin-pack, and will continue 198 not to ask "git push" to use a non-thin pack. 199 200 201Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups. 202 203 204Fixes since v1.8.5 205------------------ 206 207Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.8.5 in the maintenance 208track are contained in this release (see the maintenance releases' notes 209for details). 210 211 * The implementation of 'git stash $cmd "stash@{...}"' did not quote 212 the stash argument properly and left it split at IFS whitespace. 213 (merge 2a07e43 ow/stash-with-ifs later to maint). 214 215 * The "--[no-]informative-errors" options to "git daemon" were parsed 216 a bit too loosely, allowing any other string after these option 217 names. 218 (merge 82246b7 nd/daemon-informative-errors-typofix later to maint). 219 220 * There is no reason to have a hardcoded upper limit of the number of 221 parents for an octopus merge, created via the graft mechanism, but 222 there was. 223 (merge e228c17 js/lift-parent-count-limit later to maint). 224 225 * The basic test used to leave unnecessary trash directories in the 226 t/ directory. 227 (merge 738a8be jk/test-framework-updates later to maint). 228 229 * "git merge-base --octopus" used to leave cleaning up suboptimal 230 result to the caller, but now it does the clean-up itself. 231 (merge 8f29299 bm/merge-base-octopus-dedup later to maint). 232 233 * A "gc" process running as a different user should be able to stop a 234 new "gc" process from starting, but it didn't. 235 (merge ed7eda8 km/gc-eperm later to maint). 236 237 * An earlier "clean-up" introduced an unnecessary memory leak. 238 (merge e1c1a32 jk/credential-plug-leak later to maint). 239 240 * "git add -A" (no other arguments) in a totally empty working tree 241 used to emit an error. 242 (merge 64ed07c nd/add-empty-fix later to maint). 243 244 * "git log --decorate" did not handle a tag pointed by another tag 245 nicely. 246 (merge 5e1361c bc/log-decoration later to maint). 247 248 * When we figure out how many file descriptors to allocate for 249 keeping packfiles open, a system with non-working getrlimit() could 250 cause us to die(), but because we make this call only to get a 251 rough estimate of how many is available and we do not even attempt 252 to use up all file descriptors available ourselves, it is nicer to 253 fall back to a reasonable low value rather than dying. 254 (merge 491a8de jh/rlimit-nofile-fallback later to maint). 255 256 * read_sha1_file(), that is the workhorse to read the contents given 257 an object name, honoured object replacements, but there was no 258 corresponding mechanism to sha1_object_info() that was used to 259 obtain the metainfo (e.g. type & size) about the object. This led 260 callers to weird inconsistencies. 261 (merge 663a856 cc/replace-object-info later to maint). 262 263 * "git cat-file --batch=", an admittedly useless command, did not 264 behave very well. 265 (merge 6554dfa jk/cat-file-regression-fix later to maint). 266 267 * "git rev-parse <revs> -- <paths>" did not implement the usual 268 disambiguation rules the commands in the "git log" family used in 269 the same way. 270 (merge 62f162f jk/rev-parse-double-dashes later to maint). 271 272 * "git mv A B/", when B does not exist as a directory, should error 273 out, but it didn't. 274 (merge c57f628 mm/mv-file-to-no-such-dir-with-slash later to maint). 275 276 * A workaround to an old bug in glibc prior to glibc 2.17 has been 277 retired; this would remove a side effect of the workaround that 278 corrupts system error messages in non-C locales. 279 280 * SSL-related options were not passed correctly to underlying socket 281 layer in "git send-email". 282 (merge 5508f3e tr/send-email-ssl later to maint). 283 284 * "git commit -v" appends the patch to the log message before 285 editing, and then removes the patch when the editor returned 286 control. However, the patch was not stripped correctly when the 287 first modified path was a submodule. 288 (merge 1a72cfd jl/commit-v-strip-marker later to maint). 289 290 * "git fetch --depth=0" was a no-op, and was silently ignored. 291 Diagnose it as an error. 292 (merge 5594bca nd/transport-positive-depth-only later to maint). 293 294 * Remote repository URL expressed in scp-style host:path notation are 295 parsed more carefully (e.g. "foo/bar:baz" is local, "[::1]:/~user" asks 296 to connect to user's home directory on host at address ::1. 297 (merge a2036d7 tb/clone-ssh-with-colon-for-port later to maint). 298 299 * "git diff -- ':(icase)makefile'" was unnecessarily rejected at the 300 command line parser. 301 (merge 887c6c1 nd/magic-pathspec later to maint). 302 303 * "git cat-file --batch-check=ok" did not check the existence of 304 the named object. 305 (merge 4ef8d1d sb/sha1-loose-object-info-check-existence later to maint). 306 307 * "git am --abort" sometimes complained about not being able to write 308 a tree with an 0{40} object in it. 309 (merge 77b43ca jk/two-way-merge-corner-case-fix later to maint). 310 311 * Two processes creating loose objects at the same time could have 312 failed unnecessarily when the name of their new objects started 313 with the same byte value, due to a race condition. 314 (merge b2476a6 jh/loose-object-dirs-creation-race later to maint).