Documentation / RelNotes-1.5.3.txton commit merge-recursive --renormalize (7610fa5)
   1GIT v1.5.3 Release Notes
   2========================
   3
   4Updates since v1.5.2
   5--------------------
   6
   7* The commit walkers other than http are officially deprecated,
   8  but still supported for now.
   9
  10* The submodule support has Porcelain layer.
  11
  12  Note that the current submodule support is minimal and this is
  13  deliberately so.  A design decision we made is that operations
  14  at the supermodule level do not recurse into submodules by
  15  default.  The expectation is that later we would add a
  16  mechanism to tell git which submodules the user is interested
  17  in, and this information might be used to determine the
  18  recursive behaviour of certain commands (e.g. "git checkout"
  19  and "git diff"), but currently we haven't agreed on what that
  20  mechanism should look like.  Therefore, if you use submodules,
  21  you would probably need "git submodule update" on the
  22  submodules you care about after running a "git checkout" at
  23  the supermodule level.
  24
  25* There are a handful pack-objects changes to help you cope better
  26  with repositories with pathologically large blobs in them.
  27
  28* For people who need to import from Perforce, a front-end for
  29  fast-import is in contrib/fast-import/.
  30
  31* Comes with git-gui 0.8.2.
  32
  33* Comes with updated gitk.
  34
  35* New commands and options.
  36
  37  - "git log --date=<format>" can use more formats: iso8601, rfc2822.
  38
  39  - The hunk header output from "git diff" family can be customized
  40    with the attributes mechanism.  See gitattributes(5) for details.
  41
  42  - "git stash" allows you to quickly save away your work in
  43    progress and replay it later on an updated state.
  44
  45  - "git rebase" learned an "interactive" mode that let you
  46    pick and reorder which commits to rebuild.
  47
  48  - "git fsck" can save its findings in $GIT_DIR/lost-found, without a
  49    separate invocation of "git lost-found" command.  The blobs stored by
  50    lost-found are stored in plain format to allow you to grep in them.
  51
  52  - $GIT_WORK_TREE environment variable can be used together with
  53    $GIT_DIR to work in a subdirectory of a working tree that is
  54    not located at "$GIT_DIR/..".
  55
  56  - Giving "--file=<file>" option to "git config" is the same as
  57    running the command with GIT_CONFIG=<file> environment.
  58
  59  - "git log" learned a new option "--follow", to follow
  60    renaming history of a single file.
  61
  62  - "git filter-branch" lets you rewrite the revision history of
  63    specified branches. You can specify a number of filters to
  64    modify the commits, files and trees.
  65
  66  - "git cvsserver" learned new options (--base-path, --export-all,
  67    --strict-paths) inspired by "git daemon".
  68
  69  - "git daemon --base-path-relaxed" can help migrating a repository URL
  70    that did not use to use --base-path to use --base-path.
  71
  72  - "git commit" can use "-t templatefile" option and commit.template
  73    configuration variable to prime the commit message given to you in the
  74    editor.
  75
  76  - "git submodule" command helps you manage the projects from
  77    the superproject that contain them.
  78
  79  - In addition to core.compression configuration option,
  80    core.loosecompression and pack.compression options can
  81    independently tweak zlib compression levels used for loose
  82    and packed objects.
  83
  84  - "git ls-tree -l" shows size of blobs pointed at by the
  85    tree entries, similar to "/bin/ls -l".
  86
  87  - "git rev-list" learned --regexp-ignore-case and
  88    --extended-regexp options to tweak its matching logic used
  89    for --grep filtering.
  90
  91  - "git describe --contains" is a handier way to call more
  92    obscure command "git name-rev --tags".
  93
  94  - "git gc --aggressive" tells the command to spend more cycles
  95    to optimize the repository harder.
  96
  97  - "git repack" learned a "window-memory" limit which
  98    dynamically reduces the window size to stay within the
  99    specified memory usage.
 100
 101  - "git repack" can be told to split resulting packs to avoid
 102    exceeding limit specified with "--max-pack-size".
 103
 104  - "git fsck" gained --verbose option.  This is really really
 105    verbose but it might help you identify exact commit that is
 106    corrupt in your repository.
 107
 108  - "git format-patch" learned --numbered-files option.  This
 109    may be useful for MH users.
 110
 111  - "git format-patch" learned format.subjectprefix configuration
 112    variable, which serves the same purpose as "--subject-prefix"
 113    option.
 114
 115  - "git tag -n -l" shows tag annotations while listing tags.
 116
 117  - "git cvsimport" can optionally use the separate-remote layout.
 118
 119  - "git blame" can be told to see through commits that change
 120    whitespaces and indentation levels with "-w" option.
 121
 122  - "git send-email" can be told not to thread the messages when
 123    sending out more than one patches.
 124
 125  - "git send-email" can also be told how to find whom to cc the
 126    message to for each message via --cc-cmd.
 127
 128  - "git config" learned NUL terminated output format via -z to
 129    help scripts.
 130
 131  - "git add" learned "--refresh <paths>..." option to selectively refresh
 132    the cached stat information.
 133
 134  - "git init -q" makes the command quieter.
 135
 136  - "git -p command" now has a cousin of opposite sex, "git --no-pager
 137    command".
 138
 139* Updated behavior of existing commands.
 140
 141  - "gitweb" can offer multiple snapshot formats.
 142
 143    ***NOTE*** Unfortunately, this changes the format of the
 144    $feature{snapshot}{default} entry in the per-site
 145    configuration file 'gitweb_config.perl'.  It used to be a
 146    three-element tuple that describe a single format; with the
 147    new configuration item format, you only have to say the name
 148    of the format ('tgz', 'tbz2' or 'zip').  Please update the
 149    your configuration file accordingly.
 150
 151  - "git clone" uses -l (hardlink files under .git) by default when
 152    cloning locally.
 153
 154  - URL used for "git clone" and friends can specify nonstandard SSH port
 155    by using ssh://host:port/path/to/repo syntax.
 156
 157  - "git bundle create" can now create a bundle without negative refs,
 158    i.e. "everything since the beginning up to certain points".
 159
 160  - "git diff" (but not the plumbing level "git diff-tree") now
 161    recursively descends into trees by default.
 162
 163  - "git diff" does not show differences that come only from
 164    stat-dirtiness in the form of "diff --git" header anymore.
 165    It runs "update-index --refresh" silently as needed.
 166
 167  - "git tag -l" used to match tags by globbing its parameter as if it
 168    has wildcard '*' on both ends, which made "git tag -l gui" to match
 169    tag 'gitgui-0.7.0'; this was very annoying.  You now have to add
 170    asterisk on the sides you want to wildcard yourself.
 171
 172  - The editor to use with many interactive commands can be
 173    overridden with GIT_EDITOR environment variable, or if it
 174    does not exist, with core.editor configuration variable.  As
 175    before, if you have neither, environment variables VISUAL
 176    and EDITOR are consulted in this order, and then finally we
 177    fall back on "vi".
 178
 179  - "git rm --cached" does not complain when removing a newly
 180    added file from the index anymore.
 181
 182  - Options to "git log" to affect how --grep/--author options look for
 183    given strings now have shorter abbreviations.  -i is for ignore case,
 184    and -E is for extended regexp.
 185
 186  - "git log" learned --log-size to show the number of bytes in
 187    the log message part of the output to help qgit.
 188
 189  - "git log --name-status" does not require you to give "-r" anymore.
 190    As a general rule, Porcelain commands should recurse when showing
 191    diff.
 192
 193  - "git format-patch --root A" can be used to format everything
 194    since the beginning up to A.  This was supported with
 195    "git format-patch --root A A" for a long time, but was not
 196    properly documented.
 197
 198  - "git svn dcommit" retains local merge information.
 199
 200  - "git svnimport" allows an empty string to be specified as the
 201    trunk/ directory.  This is necessary to suck data from a SVN
 202    repository that doe not have trunk/ branches/ and tags/ organization
 203    at all.
 204
 205  - "git config" to set values also honors type flags like --bool
 206    and --int.
 207
 208  - core.quotepath configuration can be used to make textual git
 209    output to emit most of the characters in the path literally.
 210
 211  - "git mergetool" chooses its backend more wisely, taking
 212    notice of its environment such as use of X, Gnome/KDE, etc.
 213
 214  - "gitweb" shows merge commits a lot nicer than before.  The
 215    default view uses more compact --cc format, while the UI
 216    allows to choose normal diff with any parent.
 217
 218  - snapshot files "gitweb" creates from a repository at
 219    $path/$project/.git are more useful.  We use $project part
 220    in the filename, which we used to discard.
 221
 222  - "git cvsimport" creates lightweight tags; there is no
 223    interesting information we can record in an annotated tag,
 224    and the handcrafted ones the old code created was not
 225    properly formed anyway.
 226
 227  - "git push" pretends that you immediately fetched back from
 228    the remote by updating corresponding remote tracking
 229    branches if you have any.
 230
 231  - The diffstat given after a merge (or a pull) honors the
 232    color.diff configuration.
 233
 234  - "git commit --amend" is now compatible with various message source
 235    options such as -m/-C/-c/-F.
 236
 237  - "git apply --whitespace=strip" removes blank lines added at
 238    the end of the file.
 239
 240  - "git fetch" over git native protocols with "-v" option shows
 241    connection status, and the IP address of the other end, to
 242    help diagnosing problems.
 243
 244  - We used to have core.legacyheaders configuration, when
 245    set to false, allowed git to write loose objects in a format
 246    that mimics the format used by objects stored in packs.  It
 247    turns out that this was not so useful.  Although we will
 248    continue to read objects written in that format, we do not
 249    honor that configuration anymore and create loose objects in
 250    the legacy/traditional format.
 251
 252  - "--find-copies-harder" option to diff family can now be
 253    spelled as "-C -C" for brevity.
 254
 255  - "git mailsplit" (hence "git am") can read from Maildir
 256    formatted mailboxes.
 257
 258  - "git cvsserver" does not barf upon seeing "cvs login"
 259    request.
 260
 261  - "pack-objects" honors "delta" attribute set in
 262    .gitattributes.  It does not attempt to deltify blobs that
 263    come from paths with delta attribute set to false.
 264
 265  - "new-workdir" script (in contrib) can now be used with a
 266    bare repository.
 267
 268  - "git mergetool" learned to use gvimdiff.
 269
 270  - "gitview" (in contrib) has a better blame interface.
 271
 272  - "git log" and friends did not handle a commit log message
 273    that is larger than 16kB; they do now.
 274
 275  - "--pretty=oneline" output format for "git log" and friends
 276    deals with "malformed" commit log messages that have more
 277    than one lines in the first paragraph better.  We used to
 278    show the first line, cutting the title at mid-sentence; we
 279    concatenate them into a single line and treat the result as
 280    "oneline".
 281
 282  - "git p4import" has been demoted to contrib status.  For
 283    a superior option, checkout the "git p4" front end to
 284    "git fast-import" (also in contrib).  The man page and p4
 285    rpm have been removed as well.
 286
 287  - "git mailinfo" (hence "am") now tries to see if the message
 288    is in utf-8 first, instead of assuming iso-8859-1, if
 289    incoming e-mail does not say what encoding it is in.
 290
 291* Builds
 292
 293  - old-style function definitions (most notably, a function
 294    without parameter defined with "func()", not "func(void)")
 295    have been eradicated.
 296
 297  - "git tag" and "git verify-tag" have been rewritten in C.
 298
 299* Performance Tweaks
 300
 301  - "git pack-objects" avoids re-deltification cost by caching
 302    small enough delta results it creates while looking for the
 303    best delta candidates.
 304
 305  - "git pack-objects" learned a new heuristic to prefer delta
 306    that is shallower in depth over the smallest delta
 307    possible.  This improves both overall packfile access
 308    performance and packfile density.
 309
 310  - diff-delta code that is used for packing has been improved
 311    to work better on big files.
 312
 313  - when there are more than one pack files in the repository,
 314    the runtime used to try finding an object always from the
 315    newest packfile; it now tries the same packfile as we found
 316    the object requested the last time, which exploits the
 317    locality of references.
 318
 319  - verifying pack contents done by "git fsck --full" got boost
 320    by carefully choosing the order to verify objects in them.
 321
 322  - "git read-tree -m" to read into an already populated index
 323    has been optimized vastly.  The effect of this can be seen
 324    when switching branches that have differences in only a
 325    handful paths.
 326
 327  - "git add paths..." and "git commit paths..." has also been
 328    heavily optimized.
 329
 330Fixes since v1.5.2
 331------------------
 332
 333All of the fixes in v1.5.2 maintenance series are included in
 334this release, unless otherwise noted.
 335
 336* Bugfixes
 337
 338  - "gitweb" had trouble handling non UTF-8 text with older
 339    Encode.pm Perl module.
 340
 341  - "git svn" misparsed the data from the commits in the repository when
 342    the user had "color.diff = true" in the configuration.  This has been
 343    fixed.
 344
 345  - There was a case where "git svn dcommit" clobbered changes made on the
 346    SVN side while committing multiple changes.
 347
 348  - "git-write-tree" had a bad interaction with racy-git avoidance and
 349    gitattributes mechanisms.
 350
 351  - "git --bare command" overrode existing GIT_DIR setting and always
 352    made it treat the current working directory as GIT_DIR.
 353
 354  - "git ls-files --error-unmatch" does not complain if you give the
 355    same path pattern twice by mistake.
 356
 357  - "git init" autodetected core.filemode but not core.symlinks, which
 358    made a new directory created automatically by "git clone" cumbersome
 359    to use on filesystems that require these configurations to be set.
 360
 361  - "git log" family of commands behaved differently when run as "git
 362    log" (no pathspec) and as "git log --" (again, no pathspec).  This
 363    inconsistency was introduced somewhere in v1.3.0 series but now has
 364    been corrected.
 365
 366  - "git rebase -m" incorrectly displayed commits that were skipped.