Documentation / RelNotes / 2.16.0.txton commit RelNotes: the seventh batch (afc63cb)
   1Git 2.16 Release Notes
   2======================
   3
   4Backward compatibility notes and other notable changes.
   5
   6 * Use of an empty string as a pathspec element that is used for
   7   'everything matches' is now an error.
   8
   9
  10Updates since v2.15
  11-------------------
  12
  13UI, Workflows & Features
  14
  15 * An empty string as a pathspec element that means "everything"
  16   i.e. 'git add ""', is now illegal.  We started this by first
  17   deprecating and warning a pathspec that has such an element in
  18   2.11 (Nov 2016).
  19
  20 * A hook script that is set unexecutable is simply ignored.  Git
  21   notifies when such a file is ignored, unless the message is
  22   squelched via advice.ignoredHook configuration.
  23
  24 * "git pull" has been taught to accept "--[no-]signoff" option and
  25   pass it down to "git merge".
  26
  27 * The "--push-option=<string>" option to "git push" now defaults to a
  28   list of strings configured via push.pushOption variable.
  29
  30 * "gitweb" checks if a directory is searchable with Perl's "-x"
  31   operator, which can be enhanced by using "filetest 'access'"
  32   pragma, which now we do.
  33
  34 * "git stash save" has been deprecated in favour of "git stash push".
  35
  36 * The set of paths output from "git status --ignored" was tied
  37   closely with its "--untracked=<mode>" option, but now it can be
  38   controlled more flexibly.  Most notably, a directory that is
  39   ignored because it is listed to be ignored in the ignore/exclude
  40   mechanism can be handled differently from a directory that ends up
  41   to be ignored only because all files in it are ignored.
  42
  43 * The remote-helper for talking to MediaWiki has been updated to
  44   truncate an overlong pagename so that ".mw" suffix can still be
  45   added.
  46
  47 * The remote-helper for talking to MediaWiki has been updated to
  48   work with mediawiki namespaces.
  49
  50 * The "--format=..." option "git for-each-ref" takes learned to show
  51   the name of the 'remote' repository and the ref at the remote side
  52   that is affected for 'upstream' and 'push' via "%(push:remotename)"
  53   and friends.
  54
  55 * Doc and message updates to teach users "bisect view" is a synonym
  56   for "bisect visualize".
  57
  58 * "git bisect run" that did not specify any command to run used to go
  59   ahead and treated all commits to be tested as 'good'.  This has
  60   been corrected by making the command error out.
  61
  62 * The SubmittingPatches document has been converted to produce an
  63   HTML version via AsciiDoc/Asciidoctor.
  64   (merge 049e64aa50 bc/submitting-patches-in-asciidoc later to maint).
  65
  66 * We learned to talk to watchman to speed up "git status" and other
  67   operations that need to see which paths have been modified.
  68
  69 * The "diff" family of commands learned to ignore differences in
  70   carriage return at the end of line.
  71
  72 * Places that know about "sendemail.to", like documentation and shell
  73   completion (in contrib/) have been taught about "sendemail.tocmd",
  74   too.
  75
  76 * "git add --renormalize ." is a new and safer way to record the fact
  77   that you are correcting the end-of-line convention and other
  78   "convert_to_git()" glitches in the in-repository data.
  79
  80 * "git branch" and "git checkout -b" are now forbidden from creating
  81   a branch whose name is "HEAD".
  82
  83 * "git branch --list" learned to show its output through the pager by
  84   default when the output is going to a terminal, which is controlled
  85   by the pager.branch configuration variable.  This is similar to a
  86   recent change to "git tag --list".
  87
  88 * "git grep -W", "git diff -W" and their friends learned a heuristic
  89   to extend a pre-context beyond the line that matches the "function
  90   pattern" (aka "diff.*.xfuncname") to include a comment block, if
  91   exists, that immediately precedes it.
  92
  93
  94Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc.
  95
  96 * An earlier update made it possible to use an on-stack in-core
  97   lockfile structure (as opposed to having to deliberately leak an
  98   on-heap one).  Many codepaths have been updated to take advantage
  99   of this new facility.
 100
 101 * Calling cmd_foo() as if it is a general purpose helper function is
 102   a no-no.  Correct two instances of such to set an example.
 103
 104 * We try to see if somebody runs our test suite with a shell that
 105   does not support "local" like bash/dash does.
 106
 107 * An early part of piece-by-piece rewrite of "git bisect" in C.
 108
 109 * GSoC to piece-by-piece rewrite "git submodule" in C.
 110
 111 * Optimize the code to find shortest unique prefix of object names.
 112
 113 * Pathspec-limited revision traversal was taught not to keep finding
 114   unneeded differences once it knows two trees are different inside
 115   given pathspec.
 116
 117 * Conversion from uchar[20] to struct object_id continues.
 118
 119 * Code cleanup.
 120
 121 * A single-word "unsigned flags" in the diff options is being split
 122   into a structure with many bitfields.
 123
 124 * TravisCI build updates.
 125
 126 * Parts of a test to drive the long-running content filter interface
 127   has been split into its own module, hopefully to eventually become
 128   reusable.
 129
 130 * Drop (perhaps overly cautious) sanity check before using the index
 131   read from the filesystem at runtime.
 132
 133Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups.
 134
 135
 136Fixes since v2.15
 137-----------------
 138
 139 * "auto" as a value for the columnar output configuration ought to
 140   judge "is the output consumed by humans?" with the same criteria as
 141   "auto" for coloured output configuration, i.e. either the standard
 142   output stream is going to tty, or a pager is in use.  We forgot the
 143   latter, which has been fixed.
 144
 145 * The experimental "color moved lines differently in diff output"
 146   feature was buggy around "ignore whitespace changes" edges, which
 147   has been corrected.
 148
 149 * Instead of using custom line comparison and hashing functions to
 150   implement "moved lines" coloring in the diff output, use the pair
 151   of these functions from lower-layer xdiff/ code.
 152
 153 * Some codepaths did not check for errors when asking what branch the
 154   HEAD points at, which have been fixed.
 155
 156 * "git commit", after making a commit, did not check for errors when
 157   asking on what branch it made the commit, which has been corrected.
 158
 159 * "git status --ignored -u" did not stop at a working tree of a
 160   separate project that is embedded in an ignored directory and
 161   listed files in that other project, instead of just showing the
 162   directory itself as ignored.
 163
 164 * A broken access to object databases in recent update to "git grep
 165   --recurse-submodules" has been fixed.
 166
 167 * A recent regression in "git rebase -i" that broke execution of git
 168   commands from subdirectories via "exec" instruction has been fixed.
 169
 170 * A (possibly flakey) test fix.
 171
 172 * "git check-ref-format --branch @{-1}" bit a "BUG()" when run
 173   outside a repository for obvious reasons; clarify the documentation
 174   and make sure we do not even try to expand the at-mark magic in
 175   such a case, but still call the validation logic for branch names.
 176
 177 * "git fetch --recurse-submodules" now knows that submodules can be
 178   moved around in the superproject in addition to getting updated,
 179   and finds the ones that need to be fetched accordingly.
 180
 181 * Command line completion (in contrib/) update.
 182
 183 * Description of blame.{showroot,blankboundary,showemail,date}
 184   configuration variables have been added to "git config --help".
 185
 186 * After an error from lstat(), diff_populate_filespec() function
 187   sometimes still went ahead and used invalid data in struct stat,
 188   which has been fixed.
 189
 190 * UNC paths are also relevant in Cygwin builds and they are now
 191   tested just like Mingw builds.
 192
 193 * Correct start-up sequence so that a repository could be placed
 194   immediately under the root directory again (which was broken at
 195   around Git 2.13).
 196
 197 * The credential helper for libsecret (in contrib/) has been improved
 198   to allow possibly prompting the end user to unlock secrets that are
 199   currently locked (otherwise the secrets may not be loaded).
 200
 201 * MinGW updates.
 202
 203 * Error checking in "git imap-send" for empty response has been
 204   improved.
 205
 206 * Recent update to the refs infrastructure implementation started
 207   rewriting packed-refs file more often than before; this has been
 208   optimized again for most trivial cases.
 209   (merge 7c6bd25c7d mh/avoid-rewriting-packed-refs later to maint).
 210
 211 * Some error messages did not quote filenames shown in it, which have
 212   been fixed.
 213
 214 * "git rebase -i" recently started misbehaving when a submodule that
 215   is configured with 'submodule.<name>.ignore' is dirty; this has
 216   been corrected.
 217
 218 * Building with NO_LIBPCRE1_JIT did not disable it, which has been fixed.
 219
 220 * We used to add an empty alternate object database to the system
 221   that does not help anything; it has been corrected.
 222
 223 * Doc update around use of "format-patch --subject-prefix" etc.
 224
 225 * A fix for an ancient bug in "git apply --ignore-space-change" codepath.
 226
 227 * Clarify and enhance documentation for "merge-base --fork-point", as
 228   it was clear what it computed but not why/what for.
 229   (merge 6d1700b8af jc/merge-base-fork-point-doc later to maint).
 230
 231 * A few scripts (both in production and tests) incorrectly redirected
 232   their error output.  These have been corrected.
 233   (merge eadf1c8f45 tz/redirect-fix later to maint).
 234
 235 * "git notes" sent its error message to its standard output stream,
 236   which was corrected.
 237   (merge 89b9e31dd5 tz/notes-error-to-stderr later to maint).
 238
 239 * The three-way merge performed by "git cherry-pick" was confused
 240   when a new submodule was added in the meantime, which has been
 241   fixed (or "papered over").
 242   (merge c641ca6707 sb/test-cherry-pick-submodule-getting-in-a-way later to maint).
 243
 244 * The sequencer machinery (used by "git cherry-pick A..B", and "git
 245   rebase -i", among other things) would have lost a commit if stopped
 246   due to an unlockable index file, which has been fixed.
 247   (merge bd58886775 pw/sequencer-recover-from-unlockable-index later to maint).
 248
 249 * "git apply --inaccurate-eof" when used with "--ignore-space-change"
 250   triggered an internal sanity check, which has been fixed.
 251   (merge 4855de1233 rs/apply-inaccurate-eof-with-incomplete-line later to maint).
 252
 253 * Command line completion (in contrib/) has been taught about the
 254   "--copy" option of "git branch".
 255   (merge 41ca0f773e tz/complete-branch-copy later to maint).
 256
 257 * When "git rebase" prepared an mailbox of changes and fed it to "git
 258   am" to replay them, it was confused when a stray "From " happened
 259   to be in the log message of one of the replayed changes.  This has
 260   been corrected.
 261   (merge ae3b2b04bb ew/rebase-mboxrd later to maint).
 262
 263 * There was a recent semantic mismerge in the codepath to write out a
 264   section of a configuration section, which has been corrected.
 265
 266 * Mentions of "git-rebase" and "git-am" (dashed form) still remained
 267   in end-user visible strings emitted by the "git rebase" command;
 268   they have been corrected.
 269   (merge 82cb775c06 ks/rebase-no-git-foo later to maint).
 270
 271 * Contrary to the documentation, "git pull -4/-6 other-args" did not
 272   ask the underlying "git fetch" to go over IPv4/IPv6, which has been
 273   corrected.
 274   (merge ffb4568afe sw/pull-ipv46-passthru later to maint).
 275
 276 * Other minor doc, test and build updates and code cleanups.
 277   (merge c5e3bc6ec4 sd/branch-copy later to maint).