Documentation / RelNotes / 1.7.8.txton commit documentation: add tutorial for first contribution (76644e3)
   1Git v1.7.8 Release Notes
   2========================
   3
   4Updates since v1.7.7
   5--------------------
   6
   7 * Some git-svn, git-gui, git-p4 (in contrib) and msysgit updates.
   8
   9 * Updates to bash completion scripts.
  10
  11 * The build procedure has been taught to take advantage of computed
  12   dependency automatically when the compiler supports it.
  13
  14 * The date parser now accepts timezone designators that lack minutes
  15   part and also has a colon between "hh:mm".
  16
  17 * The contents of the /etc/mailname file, if exists, is used as the
  18   default value of the hostname part of the committer/author e-mail.
  19
  20 * "git am" learned how to read from patches generated by Hg.
  21
  22 * "git archive" talking with a remote repository can report errors
  23   from the remote side in a more informative way.
  24
  25 * "git branch" learned an explicit --list option to ask for branches
  26   listed, optionally with a glob matching pattern to limit its output.
  27
  28 * "git check-attr" learned "--cached" option to look at .gitattributes
  29   files from the index, not from the working tree.
  30
  31 * Variants of "git cherry-pick" and "git revert" that take multiple
  32   commits learned to "--continue" and "--abort".
  33
  34 * "git daemon" gives more human readable error messages to clients
  35   using ERR packets when appropriate.
  36
  37 * Errors at the network layer is logged by "git daemon".
  38
  39 * "git diff" learned "--minimal" option to spend extra cycles to come
  40   up with a minimal patch output.
  41
  42 * "git diff" learned "--function-context" option to show the whole
  43   function as context that was affected by a change.
  44
  45 * "git difftool" can be told to skip launching the tool for a path by
  46   answering 'n' to its prompt.
  47
  48 * "git fetch" learned to honor transfer.fsckobjects configuration to
  49   validate the objects that were received from the other end, just like
  50   "git receive-pack" (the receiving end of "git push") does.
  51
  52 * "git fetch" makes sure that the set of objects it received from the
  53   other end actually completes the history before updating the refs.
  54   "git receive-pack" (the receiving end of "git push") learned to do the
  55   same.
  56
  57 * "git fetch" learned that fetching/cloning from a regular file on the
  58   filesystem is not necessarily a request to unpack a bundle file; the
  59   file could be ".git" with "gitdir: <path>" in it.
  60
  61 * "git for-each-ref" learned "%(contents:subject)", "%(contents:body)"
  62   and "%(contents:signature)". The last one is useful for signed tags.
  63
  64 * "git grep" used to incorrectly pay attention to .gitignore files
  65   scattered in the directory it was working in even when "--no-index"
  66   option was used. It no longer does this. The "--exclude-standard"
  67   option needs to be given to explicitly activate the ignore
  68   mechanism.
  69
  70 * "git grep" learned "--untracked" option, where given patterns are
  71    searched in untracked (but not ignored) files as well as tracked
  72    files in the working tree, so that matches in new but not yet
  73    added files do not get missed.
  74
  75 * The recursive merge backend no longer looks for meaningless
  76   existing merges in submodules unless in the outermost merge.
  77
  78 * "git log" and friends learned "--children" option.
  79
  80 * "git ls-remote" learned to respond to "-h"(elp) requests.
  81
  82 * "mediawiki" remote helper can interact with (surprise!) MediaWiki
  83   with "git fetch" & "git push".
  84
  85 * "git merge" learned the "--edit" option to allow users to edit the
  86   merge commit log message.
  87
  88 * "git rebase -i" can be told to use special purpose editor suitable
  89   only for its insn sheet via sequence.editor configuration variable.
  90
  91 * "git send-email" learned to respond to "-h"(elp) requests.
  92
  93 * "git send-email" allows the value given to sendemail.aliasfile to begin
  94   with "~/" to refer to the $HOME directory.
  95
  96 * "git send-email" forces use of Authen::SASL::Perl to work around
  97   issues between Authen::SASL::Cyrus and AUTH PLAIN/LOGIN.
  98
  99 * "git stash" learned "--include-untracked" option to stash away
 100   untracked/ignored cruft from the working tree.
 101
 102 * "git submodule clone" does not leak an error message to the UI
 103   level unnecessarily anymore.
 104
 105 * "git submodule update" learned to honor "none" as the value for
 106   submodule.<name>.update to specify that the named submodule should
 107   not be checked out by default.
 108
 109 * When populating a new submodule directory with "git submodule init",
 110   the $GIT_DIR metainformation directory for submodules is created inside
 111   $GIT_DIR/modules/<name>/ directory of the superproject and referenced
 112   via the gitfile mechanism. This is to make it possible to switch
 113   between commits in the superproject that has and does not have the
 114   submodule in the tree without re-cloning.
 115
 116 * "gitweb" leaked unescaped control characters from syntax hiliter
 117   outputs.
 118
 119 * "gitweb" can be told to give custom string at the end of the HTML
 120   HEAD element.
 121
 122 * "gitweb" now has its own manual pages.
 123
 124
 125Also contains other documentation updates and minor code cleanups.
 126
 127
 128Fixes since v1.7.7
 129------------------
 130
 131Unless otherwise noted, all fixes in the 1.7.7.X maintenance track are
 132included in this release.
 133
 134 * HTTP transport did not use pushurl correctly, and also did not tell
 135   what host it is trying to authenticate with when asking for
 136   credentials.
 137   (merge deba493 jk/http-auth later to maint).
 138
 139 * "git blame" was aborted if started from an uncommitted content and
 140   the path had the textconv filter in effect.
 141   (merge 8518088 ss/blame-textconv-fake-working-tree later to maint).
 142
 143 * Adding many refs to the local repository in one go (e.g. "git fetch"
 144   that fetches many tags) and looking up a ref by name in a repository
 145   with too many refs were unnecessarily slow.
 146   (merge 17d68a54d jp/get-ref-dir-unsorted later to maint).
 147
 148 * Report from "git commit" on untracked files was confused under
 149   core.ignorecase option.
 150   (merge 395c7356 jk/name-hash-dirent later to maint).
 151
 152 * "git merge" did not understand ":/<pattern>" as a way to name a commit.
 153
 154 " "git push" on the receiving end used to call post-receive and post-update
 155   hooks for attempted removal of non-existing refs.
 156   (merge 160b81ed ph/push-to-delete-nothing later to maint).
 157
 158 * Help text for "git remote set-url" and "git remote set-branches"
 159   were misspelled.
 160   (merge c49904e fc/remote-seturl-usage-fix later to maint).
 161   (merge 656cdf0 jc/remote-setbranches-usage-fix later to maint).