Documentation / RelNotes / 2.7.0.txton commit Merge branch 'maint' (40fdcc5)
   1Git 2.7 Release Notes
   2=====================
   3
   4Updates since v2.6
   5------------------
   6
   7UI, Workflows & Features
   8
   9 * "git remote" learned "get-url" subcommand to show the URL for a
  10   given remote name used for fetching and pushing.
  11
  12 * There was no way to defeat a configured rebase.autostash variable
  13   from the command line, as "git rebase --no-autostash" was missing.
  14
  15 * "git log --date=local" used to only show the normal (default)
  16   format in the local timezone.  The command learned to take 'local'
  17   as an instruction to use the local timezone with other formats,
  18
  19 * The refs used during a "git bisect" session is now per-worktree so
  20   that independent bisect sessions can be done in different worktrees
  21   created with "git worktree add".
  22
  23 * Users who are too busy to type three extra keystrokes to ask for
  24   "git stash show -p" can now set stash.showPatch configuration
  25   varible to true to always see the actual patch, not just the list
  26   of paths affected with feel for the extent of damage via diffstat.
  27
  28 * "quiltimport" allows to specify the series file by honoring the
  29   $QUILT_SERIES environment and also --series command line option.
  30
  31 * The use of 'good/bad' in "git bisect" made it confusing to use when
  32   hunting for a state change that is not a regression (e.g. bugfix).
  33   The command learned 'old/new' and then allows the end user to
  34   say e.g. "bisect start --term-old=fast --term-new=slow" to find a
  35   performance regression.
  36
  37 * "git interpret-trailers" can now run outside of a Git repository.
  38
  39 * "git p4" learned to reencode the pathname it uses to communicate
  40   with the p4 depot with a new option.
  41
  42 * Give progress meter to "git filter-branch".
  43
  44 * Allow a later "!/abc/def" to override an earlier "/abc" that
  45   appears in the same .gitignore file to make it easier to express
  46   "everything in /abc directory is ignored, except for ...".
  47
  48 * Teach "git p4" to send large blobs outside the repository by
  49   talking to Git LFS.
  50
  51 * Prepare for Git on-disk repository representation to undergo
  52   backward incompatible changes by introducing a new repository
  53   format version "1", with an extension mechanism.
  54   (merge 067fbd4 jk/repository-extension later to maint).
  55
  56 * "git worktree" learned a "list" subcommand.
  57
  58 * "git clone --dissociate" learned that it can be used even when
  59   "--reference" was not used at the same time.
  60
  61 * "git blame" learnt to take "--first-parent" and "--reverse" at the
  62   same time when it makes sense.
  63
  64 * "git checkout" did not follow the usual "--[no-]progress"
  65   convention and implemented only "--quiet" that is essentially
  66   a superset of "--no-progress".  Extend the command to support the
  67   usual "--[no-]progress".
  68
  69
  70Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc.
  71
  72 * The infrastructure to rewrite "git submodule" in C is being built
  73   incrementally.  Let's polish these early parts well enough and make
  74   them graduate to 'next' and 'master', so that the more involved
  75   follow-up can start cooking on a solid ground.
  76
  77 * Some features from "git tag -l" and "git branch -l" have been made
  78   available to "git for-each-ref" so that eventually the unified
  79   implementation can be shared across all three.  The version merged
  80   to the 'master' branch earlier had a performance regression in "tag
  81   --contains", which has since been corrected.
  82
  83 * Because "test_when_finished" in our test framework queues the
  84   clean-up tasks to be done in a shell variable, it should not be
  85   used inside a subshell.  Add a mechanism to allow 'bash' to catch
  86   such uses, and fix the ones that were found.
  87   (merge 0968f12 jk/test-lint-forbid-when-finished-in-subshell later to maint).
  88
  89 * The debugging infrastructure for pkt-line based communication has
  90   been improved to mark the side-band communication specifically.
  91   (merge fd89433 jk/async-pkt-line later to maint).
  92
  93 * Update "git branch" that list existing branches, using the
  94   ref-filter API that is shared with "git tag" and "git
  95   for-each-ref".
  96
  97 * The test for various line-ending conversions has been enhanced.
  98
  99 * A few test scripts around "git p4" have been improved for
 100   portability.
 101
 102 * Many allocations that is manually counted (correctly) that are
 103   followed by strcpy/sprintf have been replaced with a less error
 104   prone constructs such as xstrfmt.
 105
 106 * The internal stripspace() function has been moved to where it
 107   logically belongs to, i.e. strbuf API, and the command line parser
 108   of "git stripspace" has been updated to use the parse_options API.
 109   (merge bed4452 tk/stripspace later to maint).
 110
 111 * "git am" used to spawn "git mailinfo" via run_command() API once
 112   per each patch, but learned to make a direct call to mailinfo()
 113   instead.
 114
 115 * The implementation of "git mailinfo" was refactored so that a
 116   mailinfo() function can be directly called from inside a process.
 117
 118 * With a "debug" helper, debugging of a single "git" invocation in
 119   our test scripts has become a lot easier.
 120
 121
 122Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups.
 123
 124
 125Fixes since v2.6
 126----------------
 127
 128Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v2.6 in the maintenance
 129track are contained in this release (see the maintenance releases'
 130notes for details).
 131
 132 * Very small number of options take a parameter that is optional
 133   (which is not a great UI element as they can only appear at the end
 134   of the command line).  Add notice to documentation of each and
 135   every one of them.
 136   (merge 2b594bf mm/keyid-docs later to maint).
 137
 138 * "git blame --first-parent v1.0..v2.0" was not rejected but did not
 139   limit the blame to commits on the first parent chain.
 140   (merge 95a4fb0 jk/blame-first-parent later to maint).
 141
 142 * "git subtree" (in contrib/) now can take whitespaces in the
 143   pathnames, not only in the in-tree pathname but the name of the
 144   directory that the repository is in.  (merge 5b6ab38
 145   as/subtree-with-spaces later to maint).
 146
 147 * The ssh transport, just like any other transport over the network,
 148   did not clear GIT_* environment variables, but it is possible to
 149   use SendEnv and AcceptEnv to leak them to the remote invocation of
 150   Git, which is not a good idea at all.  Explicitly clear them just
 151   like we do for the local transport.
 152   (merge a48b409 jk/connect-clear-env later to maint).
 153
 154 * Correct "git p4 --detect-labels" so that it does not fail to create
 155   a tag that points at a commit that is also being imported.
 156   (merge b43702a ld/p4-import-labels later to maint).
 157
 158 * The Makefile always runs the library archiver with hardcoded "crs"
 159   options, which was inconvenient for exotic platforms on which
 160   people want to use programs with totally different set of command
 161   line options.
 162   (merge ac179b4 jw/make-arflags-customizable later to maint).
 163
 164 * Customization to change the behaviour with "make -w" and "make -s"
 165   in our Makefile was broken when they were used together.
 166   (merge ef49e05 jk/make-findstring-makeflags-fix later to maint).
 167
 168 * Allocation related functions and stdio are unsafe things to call
 169   inside a signal handler, and indeed killing the pager can cause
 170   glibc to deadlock waiting on allocation mutex as our signal handler
 171   tries to free() some data structures in wait_for_pager().  Reduce
 172   these unsafe calls.
 173   (merge 507d780 ti/glibc-stdio-mutex-from-signal-handler later to maint).
 174
 175 * The way how --ref/--notes to specify the notes tree reference are
 176   DWIMmed was not clearly documented.
 177   (merge e14c92e jk/notes-dwim-doc later to maint).
 178
 179 * "git gc" used to barf when a symbolic ref has gone dangling
 180   (e.g. the branch that used to be your upstream's default when you
 181   cloned from it is now gone, and you did "fetch --prune").
 182   (merge 14886b4 js/gc-with-stale-symref later to maint).
 183
 184 * "git clone --dissociate" runs a big "git repack" process at the
 185   end, and it helps to close file descriptors that are open on the
 186   packs and their idx files before doing so on filesystems that
 187   cannot remove a file that is still open.
 188   (merge 786b150 js/clone-dissociate later to maint).
 189
 190 * Description of the "log.follow" configuration variable in "git log"
 191   documentation is now also copied to "git config" documentation.
 192   (merge fd8d07e dt/log-follow-config later to maint).
 193
 194 * "git rebase -i" had a minor regression recently, which stopped
 195   considering a line that begins with an indented '#' in its insn
 196   sheet not a comment. Further, the code was still too picky on
 197   Windows where CRLF left by the editor is turned into a trailing CR
 198   on the line read via the "read" built-in command of bash.  Both of
 199   these issues are now fixed.
 200   (merge 39743cf gr/rebase-i-drop-warn later to maint).
 201
 202 * After "git checkout --detach", "git status" reported a fairly
 203   useless "HEAD detached at HEAD", instead of saying at which exact
 204   commit.
 205   (merge 0eb8548 mm/detach-at-HEAD-reflog later to maint).
 206
 207 * When "git send-email" wanted to talk over Net::SMTP::SSL,
 208   Net::Cmd::datasend() did not like to be fed too many bytes at the
 209   same time and failed to send messages.  Send the payload one line
 210   at a time to work around the problem.
 211   (merge f60c483 sa/send-email-smtp-batch-data-limit later to maint).
 212
 213 * When "git am" was rewritten as a built-in, it stopped paying
 214   attention to user.signingkey, which was fixed.
 215   (merge 434c64d pt/am-builtin later to maint).
 216
 217 * It was not possible to use a repository-lookalike created by "git
 218   worktree add" as a local source of "git clone".
 219   (merge d78db84 nd/clone-linked-checkout later to maint).
 220
 221 * On a case insensitive filesystems, setting GIT_WORK_TREE variable
 222   using a random cases that does not agree with what the filesystem
 223   thinks confused Git that it wasn't inside the working tree.
 224   (merge 63ec5e1 js/icase-wt-detection later to maint).
 225
 226 * Performance-measurement tests did not work without an installed Git.
 227   (merge 31cd128 sb/perf-without-installed-git later to maint).
 228
 229 * A test script for the HTTP service had a timing dependent bug,
 230   which was fixed.
 231   (merge 362d8b6 sb/http-flaky-test-fix later to maint).
 232
 233 * There were some classes of errors that "git fsck" diagnosed to its
 234   standard error that did not cause it to exit with non-zero status.
 235   (merge 122f76f jc/fsck-dropped-errors later to maint).
 236
 237 * Work around "git p4" failing when the P4 depot records the contents
 238   in UTF-16 without UTF-16 BOM.
 239   (merge 1f5f390 ls/p4-translation-failure later to maint).
 240
 241 * When "git gc --auto" is backgrounded, its diagnosis message is
 242   lost.  Save it to a file in $GIT_DIR and show it next time the "gc
 243   --auto" is run.
 244   (merge 329e6e8 nd/gc-auto-background-fix later to maint).
 245
 246 * The submodule code has been taught to work better with separate
 247   work trees created via "git worktree add".
 248   (merge 11f9dd7 mk/submodule-gitdir-path later to maint).
 249
 250 * "git gc" is safe to run anytime only because it has the built-in
 251   grace period to protect young objects.  In order to run with no
 252   grace period, the user must make sure that the repository is
 253   quiescent.
 254   (merge fae1a90 jc/doc-gc-prune-now later to maint).
 255
 256 * A recent "filter-branch --msg-filter" broke skipping of the commit
 257   object header, which is fixed.
 258   (merge a5a4b3f jk/filter-branch-use-of-sed-on-incomplete-line later to maint).
 259
 260 * The normalize_ceiling_entry() function does not muck with the end
 261   of the path it accepts, and the real world callers do rely on that,
 262   but a test insisted that the function drops a trailing slash.
 263   (merge b2a7123 rd/test-path-utils later to maint).
 264
 265 * A test for interaction between untracked cache and sparse checkout
 266   added in Git 2.5 days were flaky.
 267   (merge 9b680fb dt/t7063-fix-flaky-test later to maint).
 268
 269 * A couple of commands still showed "[options]" in their usage string
 270   to note where options should come on their command line, but we
 271   spell that "[<options>]" in most places these days.
 272   (merge d96a031 rt/placeholder-in-usage later to maint).
 273
 274 * The synopsis text and the usage string of subcommands that read
 275   list of things from the standard input are often shown as if they
 276   only take input from a file on a filesystem, which was misleading.
 277   (merge 33e8fc8 jc/usage-stdin later to maint).
 278
 279 * "git am -3" had a small regression where it is aborted in its error
 280   handling codepath when underlying merge-recursive failed in certain
 281   ways, as it assumed that the internal call to merge-recursive will
 282   never die, which is not the case (yet).
 283   (merge c63d4b2 jc/am-3-fallback-regression-fix later to maint).
 284
 285 * The linkage order of libraries was wrong in places around libcurl.
 286   (merge 7e91e8d rp/link-curl-before-ssl later to maint).
 287
 288 * The name-hash subsystem that is used to cope with case insensitive
 289   filesystems keeps track of directories and their on-filesystem
 290   cases for all the paths in the index by holding a pointer to a
 291   randomly chosen cache entry that is inside the directory (for its
 292   ce->ce_name component).  This pointer was not updated even when the
 293   cache entry was removed from the index, leading to use after free.
 294   This was fixed by recording the path for each directory instead of
 295   borrowing cache entries and restructuring the API somewhat.
 296   (merge 41284eb dt/name-hash-dir-entry-fix later to maint).
 297
 298 * "git merge-file" tried to signal how many conflicts it found, which
 299   obviously would not work well when there are too many of them.
 300   (merge e34f802 jk/merge-file-exit-code later to maint).
 301
 302 * The error message from "git blame --contents --reverse" incorrectly
 303   talked about "--contents --children".
 304   (merge 9526197 mk/blame-error-message later to maint).
 305
 306 * "git imap-send" did not compile well with older version of cURL library.
 307   (merge 71d9257 js/imap-send-curl-compilation-fix later to maint).
 308
 309 * Merging a branch that removes a path and another that changes the
 310   mode bits on the same path should have conflicted at the path, but
 311   it didn't and silently favoured the removal.
 312   (merge 72fac66 jk/delete-modechange-conflict later to maint).
 313
 314 * "git --literal-pathspecs add -u/-A" without any command line
 315   argument misbehaved ever since Git 2.0.
 316   (merge 29abb33 jc/add-u-A-default-to-top later to maint).
 317
 318 * "git daemon" uses "run_command()" without "finish_command()", so it
 319   needs to release resources itself, which it forgot to do.
 320   (merge b1b49ff rs/daemon-plug-child-leak later to maint).
 321
 322 * "git status --branch --short" accessed beyond the constant string
 323   "HEAD", which has been corrected.
 324   (merge c72b49d rs/wt-status-detached-branch-fix later to maint).
 325
 326 * We peek objects from submodule's object store by linking it to the
 327   list of alternate object databases, but the code to do so forgot to
 328   correctly initialize the list.
 329   (merge 9a6e4f0 jk/initialization-fix-to-add-submodule-odb later to maint).
 330
 331 * The code to prepare the working tree side of temporary directory
 332   for the "dir-diff" feature forgot that symbolic links need not be
 333   copied (or symlinked) to the temporary area, as the code already
 334   special cases and overwrites them.  Besides, it was wrong to try
 335   computing the object name of the target of symbolic link, which may
 336   not even exist or may be a directory.
 337   (merge cfe2d4b da/difftool later to maint).
 338
 339 * A Range: request can be responded with a full response and when
 340   asked properly libcurl knows how to strip the result down to the
 341   requested range.  However, we were hand-crafting a range request
 342   and it did not kick in.
 343
 344 * Code clean-up, minor fixes etc.
 345   (merge 15ed07d jc/rerere later to maint).
 346   (merge e7a7401 pt/pull-builtin later to maint).
 347   (merge 29bc480 nd/ls-remote-does-not-have-u-option later to maint).
 348   (merge be510e0 jk/asciidoctor-section-heading-markup-fix later to maint).
 349   (merge 83e6bda tk/typofix-connect-unknown-proto-error later to maint).
 350   (merge a43eb67 tk/doc-interpret-trailers-grammo later to maint).
 351   (merge ba128e2 es/worktree-add-cleanup later to maint).
 352   (merge 44cd91e cc/quote-comments later to maint).
 353   (merge 147875f sb/submodule-config-parse later to maint).
 354   (merge ae9f274 es/worktree-add later to maint).
 355   (merge 3b19dba jc/em-dash-in-doc later to maint).
 356   (merge f3f38c7 jc/everyday-markup later to maint).
 357   (merge 77d5f71 xf/user-manual-markup later to maint).
 358   (merge b2af482 xf/user-manual-ff later to maint).
 359   (merge e510ab8 rs/pop-commit later to maint).
 360   (merge fdcdb77 js/misc-fixes later to maint).
 361   (merge c949b00 rs/show-branch-argv-array later to maint).