1Git v1.8.4 Release Notes 2======================== 3 4Updates since v1.8.3 5-------------------- 6 7Foreign interfaces, subsystems and ports. 8 9 * Git-gui has been updated to its 0.18.0 version. 10 11 * MediaWiki remote helper (in contrib/) has been updated to use the 12 credential helper interface from Git.pm. 13 14 * Update build for Cygwin 1.[57]. Torsten Bögershausen reports that 15 this is fine with Cygwin 1.7 ($gmane/225824) so let's try moving it 16 ahead. 17 18 * The credential helper to talk to keychain on OS X (in contrib/) has 19 been updated to kick in not just when talking http/https but also 20 imap(s) and smtp. 21 22 * Remote transport helper has been updated to report errors and 23 maintain ref hierarchy used to keep track of its own state better. 24 25 * With "export" remote-helper protocol, (1) a push that tries to 26 update a remote ref whose name is different from the pushing side 27 does not work yet, and (2) the helper may not know how to do 28 --dry-run; these problematic cases are disabled for now. 29 30 * git-remote-hg/bzr (in contrib/) updates. 31 32 * git-remote-mw (in contrib/) hints users to check the certificate, 33 when https:// connection failed. 34 35 36UI, Workflows & Features 37 38 * Various subcommands of "git submodule" refused to run from anywhere 39 other than the top of the working tree of the superproject, but 40 they have been taught to let you run from a subdirectory. 41 42 * "git diff" learned a mode that ignores hunks whose change consists 43 only of additions and removals of blank lines, which is the same as 44 "diff -B" (ignore blank lines) of GNU diff. 45 46 * "git rm" gives a single message followed by list of paths to report 47 multiple paths that cannot be removed. 48 49 * "git rebase" can be told with ":/look for this string" syntax commits 50 to replay the changes onto and where the work to be replayed begins. 51 52 * Many tutorials teach users to set "color.ui" to "auto" as the first 53 thing after you set "user.name/email" to introduce yourselves to 54 Git. Now the variable defaults to "auto". 55 56 * On Cygwin, "cygstart" is now recognised as a possible way to start 57 a web browser (used in "help -w" and "instaweb" among others). 58 59### * "git status" learned status.branch and status.short configuration 60### variables to use --branch and --short options by default (override 61### with --no-branch and --no-short options from the command line). 62 63 * "git cmd <name>", when <name> happens to be a 40-hex string, 64 directly uses the 40-hex string as an object name, even if a ref 65 "refs/<some hierarchy>/<name>" exists. This disambiguation order 66 is unlikely to change, but we should warn about the ambiguity just 67 like we warn when more than one refs/ hierachies share the same 68 name. 69 70 * "git rebase" learned "--[no-]autostash" option to save local 71 changes instead of refusing to run (to which people's normal 72 response was to stash them and re-run). This introduced a corner 73 case breakage to "git am --abort" but it has been fixed. 74 75 * Instead of typing four capital letters "HEAD", you can say "@" now, 76 e.g. "git log @". 77 78 * "check-ignore" (new feature since 1.8.2) has been updated to work 79 more like "check-attr" over bidi-pipes. 80 81 * "git describe" learned "--first-parent" option to limit its closest 82 tagged commit search to the first-parent chain. 83 84 * "git merge foo" that might have meant "git merge origin/foo" is 85 diagnosed with a more informative error message. 86 87 * "git log -L<line>,<range>:<filename>" has been added. This may 88 still have leaks and rough edges, though. 89 90 * We used the approxidate() parser for "--expire=<timestamp>" options 91 of various commands, but it is better to treat --expire=all and 92 --expire=now a bit more specially than using the current timestamp. 93 "git gc" and "git reflog" have been updated with a new parsing 94 function for expiry dates. 95 96 * Updates to completion (both bash and zsh) helpers. 97 98 * The behaviour of the "--chain-reply-to" option of "git send-email" 99 have changed at 1.7.0, and we added a warning/advice message to 100 help users adjust to the new behaviour back then, but we kept it 101 around for too long. The message has finally been removed. 102 103 * "git fetch origin master" unlike "git fetch origin" or "git fetch" 104 did not update "refs/remotes/origin/master"; this was an early 105 design decision to keep the update of remote tracking branches 106 predictable, but in practice it turns out that people find it more 107 convenient to opportunistically update them whenever we have a 108 chance, and we have been updating them when we run "git push" which 109 already breaks the original "predictability" anyway. 110 111 * The configuration variable core.checkstat was advertised in the 112 documentation but the code expected core.statinfo instead. 113 For now, we accept both core.checkstat and core.statinfo, but the 114 latter will be removed in the longer term. 115 116 117Performance, Internal Implementation, etc. 118 119 * "git pack-refs" that races with new ref creation or deletion have 120 been susceptible to lossage of refs under right conditions, which 121 has been tightened up. 122 123 * We read loose and packed rerferences in two steps, but after 124 deciding to read a loose ref but before actually opening it to read 125 it, another process racing with us can unlink it, which would cause 126 us to barf. The codepath has been updated to retry when such a 127 race is detected, instead of outright failing. 128 129 * Uses of the platform fnmatch(3) function (many places in the code, 130 matching pathspec, .gitignore and .gitattributes to name a few) 131 have been replaced with wildmatch, allowing "foo/**/bar" that would 132 match foo/bar, foo/a/bar, foo/a/b/bar, etc. 133 134 * Memory ownership and lifetime rules for what for-each-ref feeds to 135 its callbacks have been clarified (in short, "you do not own it, so 136 make a copy if you want to keep it"). 137 138 * The revision traversal logic to improve culling of irrelevant 139 parents while traversing a mergy history has been updated. 140 141 * Some leaks in unpack-trees (used in merge, cherry-pick and other 142 codepaths) have been plugged. 143 144 * The codepath to read from marks files in fast-import/export did not 145 have to accept anything but 40-hex representation of the object 146 name. Further, fast-export did not need full in-core object 147 representation to have parsed wen reading from them. These 148 codepaths have been optimized by taking advantage of these access 149 patterns. 150 151 * Object lookup logic, when the object hashtable starts to become 152 crowded, has been optimized. 153 154 * When TEST_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY setting is used, it was handled somewhat 155 inconsistently between the test framework and t/Makefile, and logic 156 to summarize the results looked at a wrong place. 157 158 * "git clone" uses a lighter-weight implementation when making sure 159 that the history behind refs are complete. 160 161 * Many warnings from sparse source checker in compat/ area has been 162 squelched. 163 164 * The code to reading and updating packed-refs file has been updated, 165 correcting corner case bugs. 166 167 168Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups. 169 170 171Fixes since v1.8.3 172------------------ 173 174Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.8.3 in the maintenance 175track are contained in this release (see release notes to them for 176details). 177 178 * "git name-rev --refs=tags/v*" were forbidden, which was a bit 179 inconvenient (you had to give a pattern to match refs fully, like 180 --refs=refs/tags/v*). 181 (merge 98c5c4a nk/name-rev-abbreviated-refs later to maint). 182 183 * "git apply" parsed patches that add new files, generated by 184 programs other than Git, incorrectly. This is an old breakage in 185 v1.7.11 and will need to be merged down to the maintanance tracks. 186 (merge 212eb96 tr/maint-apply-non-git-patch-parsefix later to maint). 187 188 * Older cURL wanted piece of memory we call it with to be stable, but 189 we updated the auth material after handing it to a call. 190 (merge a94cf2c bc/http-keep-memory-given-to-curl later to maint). 191 192 * "git pull" into nothing trashed "local changes" that were in the 193 index, and this avoids it. 194 (merge b4dc085 jk/pull-into-dirty-unborn later to maint). 195 196 * Many "git submodule" operations do not work on a submodule at a 197 path whose name is not in ASCII. 198 (merge bed9470 fg/submodule-non-ascii-path later to maint). 199 200 * "cherry-pick" had a small leak in an error codepath. 201 (merge 706728a fc/sequencer-plug-leak later to maint). 202 203 * Logic used by git-send-email to suppress cc mishandled names like 204 "A U. Thor" <author@example.xz>, where the human readable part 205 needs to be quoted (the user input may not have the double quotes 206 around the name, and comparison was done between quoted and 207 unquoted strings). It also mishandled names that need RFC2047 208 quoting. 209 (merge 1495266 mt/send-email-cc-match-fix later to maint). 210 211 * Call to discard_cache/discard_index (used when we use different 212 contents of the index in-core, in many operations like commit, 213 apply, and merge) used to leak memory that held the array of index 214 entries, which has been plugged. 215 (merge a0fc4db rs/discard-index-discard-array later to maint). 216 217 * "gitweb" forgot to clear a global variable $search_regexp upon each 218 request, mistakenly carrying over the previous search to a new one 219 when used as a persistent CGI. 220 (merge ca7a5dc cm/gitweb-project-list-persistent-cgi-fix later to maint). 221 222 * The wildmatch engine did not honor WM_CASEFOLD option correctly. 223 (merge b79c0c3 ar/wildmatch-foldcase later to maint). 224 225 * "git log -c --follow $path" segfaulted upon hitting the commit that 226 renamed the $path being followed. 227 (merge 46ec510 cb/log-follow-with-combined later to maint). 228 229 * When a reflog notation is used for implicit "current branch", we 230 did not say which branch and worse said "branch ''". 231 (merge 305ebea rr/die-on-missing-upstream later to maint). 232 233 * "difftool --dir-diff" did not copy back changes made by the 234 end-user in the diff tool backend to the working tree in some 235 cases. 236 (merge 32eaf1d ks/difftool-dir-diff-copy-fix later to maint). 237 238 * "git push $there HEAD:branch" did not resolve HEAD early enough, so 239 it was easy to flip it around while push is still going on and push 240 out a branch that the user did not originally intended when the 241 command was started. 242 (merge 0f075b2 rr/push-head later to maint). 243 244 * The bash prompt code (in contrib/) displayed the name of the branch 245 being rebased when "rebase -i/-m/-p" modes are in use, but not the 246 plain vanilla "rebase". 247 (merge 1306321 fc/show-branch-in-rebase-am later to maint). 248 249 * Handling of negative exclude pattern for directories "!dir" was 250 broken in the update to v1.8.3. 251 (merge c3c327d kb/status-ignored-optim-2 later to maint). 252 253 * zsh prompt script that borrowed from bash prompt script did not 254 work due to slight differences in array variable notation between 255 these two shells. 256 (merge d0583da tg/maint-zsh-svn-remote-prompt later to maint). 257 258 * An entry for "file://" scheme in the enumeration of URL types Git 259 can take in the HTML documentation was made into a clickable link 260 by mistake. 261 (merge 4c32e36 nd/urls-doc-no-file-hyperlink-fix later to maint). 262 263 * "git push --[no-]verify" was not documented. 264 (merge 90d32d1 tr/push-no-verify-doc later to maint). 265 266 * Stop installing the git-remote-testpy script that is only used for 267 testing. 268 (merge 416fda6 fc/makefile later to maint). 269 270 * "git commit --allow-empty-message -m ''" should not start an 271 editor. 272 (merge 2520677 rs/commit-m-no-edit later to maint). 273 274 * "git merge @{-1}~22" was rewritten to "git merge frotz@{1}~22" 275 incorrectly when your previous branch was "frotz" (it should be 276 rewritten to "git merge frotz~22" instead). 277 (merge 84cf246 jc/strbuf-branchname-fix later to maint). 278 279 * "git diff -c -p" was not showing a deleted line from a hunk when 280 another hunk immediately begins where the earlier one ends. 281 (merge aac3857 mk/combine-diff-context-horizon-fix later to maint). 282 283 * "git log --ancestry-path A...B" did not work as expected, as it did 284 not pay attention to the fact that the merge base between A and B 285 was the bottom of the range being specified. 286 (merge a765499 kb/ancestry-path-threedots later to maint). 287 288 * Mac OS X does not like to write(2) more than INT_MAX number of 289 bytes; work it around by chopping write(2) into smaller pieces. 290 (merge 6c642a8 fc/macos-x-clipped-write later to maint). 291 292 * Newer MacOS X encourages the programs to compile and link with 293 their CommonCrypto, not with OpenSSL. 294 (merge be4c828 da/darwin later to maint). 295 296 * "git clone foo/bar:baz" cannot be a request to clone from a remote 297 over git-over-ssh specified in the scp style. This case is now 298 detected and clones from a local repository at "foo/bar:baz". 299 (merge 6000334 nd/clone-local-with-colon later to maint). 300 301 * When $HOME is misconfigured to point at an unreadable directory, we 302 used to complain and die. Loosen the check. 303 (merge 4698c8f jn/config-ignore-inaccessible later to maint). 304 305 * "git subtree" (in contrib/) had one codepath with loose error 306 checks to lose data at the remote side. 307 (merge 3212d56 jk/subtree-do-not-push-if-split-fails later to maint). 308 309 * "git fetch" into a shallow repository from a repository that does 310 not know about the shallow boundary commits (e.g. a different fork 311 from the repository the current shallow repository was cloned from) 312 did not work correctly. 313 (merge 71d5f93 mh/fetch-into-shallow later to maint). 314 315 * "git checkout foo" DWIMs the intended "upstream" and turns it into 316 "git checkout -t -b foo remotes/origin/foo". This codepath has been 317 updated to correctly take existing remote definitions into account. 318 (merge 229177a jh/checkout-auto-tracking later to maint).