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 * Having multiple "fixup!" on a line in the rebase instruction sheet 39 did not work very well with "git rebase -i --autosquash". 40 41 * "git log" learned the "--author-date-order" option, with which the 42 output is topologically sorted and commits in parallel histories 43 are shown intermixed together based on the author timestamp. 44 45 * Various subcommands of "git submodule" refused to run from anywhere 46 other than the top of the working tree of the superproject, but 47 they have been taught to let you run from a subdirectory. 48 49 * "git diff" learned a mode that ignores hunks whose change consists 50 only of additions and removals of blank lines, which is the same as 51 "diff -B" (ignore blank lines) of GNU diff. 52 53 * "git rm" gives a single message followed by list of paths to report 54 multiple paths that cannot be removed. 55 56 * "git rebase" can be told with ":/look for this string" syntax commits 57 to replay the changes onto and where the work to be replayed begins. 58 59 * Many tutorials teach users to set "color.ui" to "auto" as the first 60 thing after you set "user.name/email" to introduce yourselves to 61 Git. Now the variable defaults to "auto". 62 63 * On Cygwin, "cygstart" is now recognised as a possible way to start 64 a web browser (used in "help -w" and "instaweb" among others). 65 66### * "git status" learned status.branch and status.short configuration 67### variables to use --branch and --short options by default (override 68### with --no-branch and --no-short options from the command line). 69 70 * "git cmd <name>", when <name> happens to be a 40-hex string, 71 directly uses the 40-hex string as an object name, even if a ref 72 "refs/<some hierarchy>/<name>" exists. This disambiguation order 73 is unlikely to change, but we should warn about the ambiguity just 74 like we warn when more than one refs/ hierachies share the same 75 name. 76 77 * "git rebase" learned "--[no-]autostash" option to save local 78 changes instead of refusing to run (to which people's normal 79 response was to stash them and re-run). This introduced a corner 80 case breakage to "git am --abort" but it has been fixed. 81 82 * Instead of typing four capital letters "HEAD", you can say "@" now, 83 e.g. "git log @". 84 85 * "check-ignore" (new feature since 1.8.2) has been updated to work 86 more like "check-attr" over bidi-pipes. 87 88 * "git describe" learned "--first-parent" option to limit its closest 89 tagged commit search to the first-parent chain. 90 91 * "git merge foo" that might have meant "git merge origin/foo" is 92 diagnosed with a more informative error message. 93 94 * "git log -L<line>,<range>:<filename>" has been added. This may 95 still have leaks and rough edges, though. 96 97 * We used the approxidate() parser for "--expire=<timestamp>" options 98 of various commands, but it is better to treat --expire=all and 99 --expire=now a bit more specially than using the current timestamp. 100 "git gc" and "git reflog" have been updated with a new parsing 101 function for expiry dates. 102 103 * Updates to completion (both bash and zsh) helpers. 104 105 * The behaviour of the "--chain-reply-to" option of "git send-email" 106 have changed at 1.7.0, and we added a warning/advice message to 107 help users adjust to the new behaviour back then, but we kept it 108 around for too long. The message has finally been removed. 109 110 * "git fetch origin master" unlike "git fetch origin" or "git fetch" 111 did not update "refs/remotes/origin/master"; this was an early 112 design decision to keep the update of remote tracking branches 113 predictable, but in practice it turns out that people find it more 114 convenient to opportunistically update them whenever we have a 115 chance, and we have been updating them when we run "git push" which 116 already breaks the original "predictability" anyway. 117 118 * The configuration variable core.checkstat was advertised in the 119 documentation but the code expected core.statinfo instead. 120 For now, we accept both core.checkstat and core.statinfo, but the 121 latter will be removed in the longer term. 122 123 124Performance, Internal Implementation, etc. 125 126 * The original way to specify remote repository using .git/branches/ 127 used to have a nifty feature. The code to support the feature was 128 still in a function but the caller was changed not to call it 5 129 years ago, breaking that feature and leaving the supporting code 130 unreachable. The dead code has been removed. 131 132 * "git pack-refs" that races with new ref creation or deletion have 133 been susceptible to lossage of refs under right conditions, which 134 has been tightened up. 135 136 * We read loose and packed rerferences in two steps, but after 137 deciding to read a loose ref but before actually opening it to read 138 it, another process racing with us can unlink it, which would cause 139 us to barf. The codepath has been updated to retry when such a 140 race is detected, instead of outright failing. 141 142 * Uses of the platform fnmatch(3) function (many places in the code, 143 matching pathspec, .gitignore and .gitattributes to name a few) 144 have been replaced with wildmatch, allowing "foo/**/bar" that would 145 match foo/bar, foo/a/bar, foo/a/b/bar, etc. 146 147 * Memory ownership and lifetime rules for what for-each-ref feeds to 148 its callbacks have been clarified (in short, "you do not own it, so 149 make a copy if you want to keep it"). 150 151 * The revision traversal logic to improve culling of irrelevant 152 parents while traversing a mergy history has been updated. 153 154 * Some leaks in unpack-trees (used in merge, cherry-pick and other 155 codepaths) have been plugged. 156 157 * The codepath to read from marks files in fast-import/export did not 158 have to accept anything but 40-hex representation of the object 159 name. Further, fast-export did not need full in-core object 160 representation to have parsed wen reading from them. These 161 codepaths have been optimized by taking advantage of these access 162 patterns. 163 164 * Object lookup logic, when the object hashtable starts to become 165 crowded, has been optimized. 166 167 * When TEST_OUTPUT_DIRECTORY setting is used, it was handled somewhat 168 inconsistently between the test framework and t/Makefile, and logic 169 to summarize the results looked at a wrong place. 170 171 * "git clone" uses a lighter-weight implementation when making sure 172 that the history behind refs are complete. 173 174 * Many warnings from sparse source checker in compat/ area has been 175 squelched. 176 177 * The code to reading and updating packed-refs file has been updated, 178 correcting corner case bugs. 179 180 181Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups. 182 183 184Fixes since v1.8.3 185------------------ 186 187Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.8.3 in the maintenance 188track are contained in this release (see release notes to them for 189details). 190 191 * The configuration variable column.ui was poorly documented. 192 (merge 5e62cc1 rr/column-doc later to maint). 193 194 * "git name-rev --refs=tags/v*" were forbidden, which was a bit 195 inconvenient (you had to give a pattern to match refs fully, like 196 --refs=refs/tags/v*). 197 (merge 98c5c4a nk/name-rev-abbreviated-refs later to maint). 198 199 * "git apply" parsed patches that add new files, generated by 200 programs other than Git, incorrectly. This is an old breakage in 201 v1.7.11 and will need to be merged down to the maintanance tracks. 202 (merge 212eb96 tr/maint-apply-non-git-patch-parsefix later to maint). 203 204 * Older cURL wanted piece of memory we call it with to be stable, but 205 we updated the auth material after handing it to a call. 206 (merge a94cf2c bc/http-keep-memory-given-to-curl later to maint). 207 208 * "git pull" into nothing trashed "local changes" that were in the 209 index, and this avoids it. 210 (merge b4dc085 jk/pull-into-dirty-unborn later to maint). 211 212 * Many "git submodule" operations do not work on a submodule at a 213 path whose name is not in ASCII. 214 (merge bed9470 fg/submodule-non-ascii-path later to maint). 215 216 * "cherry-pick" had a small leak in an error codepath. 217 (merge 706728a fc/sequencer-plug-leak later to maint). 218 219 * Logic used by git-send-email to suppress cc mishandled names like 220 "A U. Thor" <author@example.xz>, where the human readable part 221 needs to be quoted (the user input may not have the double quotes 222 around the name, and comparison was done between quoted and 223 unquoted strings). It also mishandled names that need RFC2047 224 quoting. 225 (merge 1495266 mt/send-email-cc-match-fix later to maint). 226 227 * Call to discard_cache/discard_index (used when we use different 228 contents of the index in-core, in many operations like commit, 229 apply, and merge) used to leak memory that held the array of index 230 entries, which has been plugged. 231 (merge a0fc4db rs/discard-index-discard-array later to maint). 232 233 * "gitweb" forgot to clear a global variable $search_regexp upon each 234 request, mistakenly carrying over the previous search to a new one 235 when used as a persistent CGI. 236 (merge ca7a5dc cm/gitweb-project-list-persistent-cgi-fix later to maint). 237 238 * The wildmatch engine did not honor WM_CASEFOLD option correctly. 239 (merge b79c0c3 ar/wildmatch-foldcase later to maint). 240 241 * "git log -c --follow $path" segfaulted upon hitting the commit that 242 renamed the $path being followed. 243 (merge 46ec510 cb/log-follow-with-combined later to maint). 244 245 * When a reflog notation is used for implicit "current branch", we 246 did not say which branch and worse said "branch ''". 247 (merge 305ebea rr/die-on-missing-upstream later to maint). 248 249 * "difftool --dir-diff" did not copy back changes made by the 250 end-user in the diff tool backend to the working tree in some 251 cases. 252 (merge 32eaf1d ks/difftool-dir-diff-copy-fix later to maint). 253 254 * "git push $there HEAD:branch" did not resolve HEAD early enough, so 255 it was easy to flip it around while push is still going on and push 256 out a branch that the user did not originally intended when the 257 command was started. 258 (merge 0f075b2 rr/push-head later to maint). 259 260 * The bash prompt code (in contrib/) displayed the name of the branch 261 being rebased when "rebase -i/-m/-p" modes are in use, but not the 262 plain vanilla "rebase". 263 (merge 1306321 fc/show-branch-in-rebase-am later to maint). 264 265 * Handling of negative exclude pattern for directories "!dir" was 266 broken in the update to v1.8.3. 267 (merge c3c327d kb/status-ignored-optim-2 later to maint). 268 269 * zsh prompt script that borrowed from bash prompt script did not 270 work due to slight differences in array variable notation between 271 these two shells. 272 (merge d0583da tg/maint-zsh-svn-remote-prompt later to maint). 273 274 * An entry for "file://" scheme in the enumeration of URL types Git 275 can take in the HTML documentation was made into a clickable link 276 by mistake. 277 (merge 4c32e36 nd/urls-doc-no-file-hyperlink-fix later to maint). 278 279 * "git push --[no-]verify" was not documented. 280 (merge 90d32d1 tr/push-no-verify-doc later to maint). 281 282 * Stop installing the git-remote-testpy script that is only used for 283 testing. 284 (merge 416fda6 fc/makefile later to maint). 285 286 * "git commit --allow-empty-message -m ''" should not start an 287 editor. 288 (merge 2520677 rs/commit-m-no-edit later to maint). 289 290 * "git merge @{-1}~22" was rewritten to "git merge frotz@{1}~22" 291 incorrectly when your previous branch was "frotz" (it should be 292 rewritten to "git merge frotz~22" instead). 293 (merge 84cf246 jc/strbuf-branchname-fix later to maint). 294 295 * "git diff -c -p" was not showing a deleted line from a hunk when 296 another hunk immediately begins where the earlier one ends. 297 (merge aac3857 mk/combine-diff-context-horizon-fix later to maint). 298 299 * "git log --ancestry-path A...B" did not work as expected, as it did 300 not pay attention to the fact that the merge base between A and B 301 was the bottom of the range being specified. 302 (merge a765499 kb/ancestry-path-threedots later to maint). 303 304 * Mac OS X does not like to write(2) more than INT_MAX number of 305 bytes; work it around by chopping write(2) into smaller pieces. 306 (merge 6c642a8 fc/macos-x-clipped-write later to maint). 307 308 * Newer MacOS X encourages the programs to compile and link with 309 their CommonCrypto, not with OpenSSL. 310 (merge be4c828 da/darwin later to maint). 311 312 * "git clone foo/bar:baz" cannot be a request to clone from a remote 313 over git-over-ssh specified in the scp style. This case is now 314 detected and clones from a local repository at "foo/bar:baz". 315 (merge 6000334 nd/clone-local-with-colon later to maint). 316 317 * When $HOME is misconfigured to point at an unreadable directory, we 318 used to complain and die. Loosen the check. 319 (merge 4698c8f jn/config-ignore-inaccessible later to maint). 320 321 * "git subtree" (in contrib/) had one codepath with loose error 322 checks to lose data at the remote side. 323 (merge 3212d56 jk/subtree-do-not-push-if-split-fails later to maint). 324 325 * "git fetch" into a shallow repository from a repository that does 326 not know about the shallow boundary commits (e.g. a different fork 327 from the repository the current shallow repository was cloned from) 328 did not work correctly. 329 (merge 71d5f93 mh/fetch-into-shallow later to maint). 330 331 * "git checkout foo" DWIMs the intended "upstream" and turns it into 332 "git checkout -t -b foo remotes/origin/foo". This codepath has been 333 updated to correctly take existing remote definitions into account. 334 (merge 229177a jh/checkout-auto-tracking later to maint).