1Git 2.13 Release Notes 2====================== 3 4Backward compatibility notes. 5 6 * Use of an empty string as a pathspec element that is used for 7 'everything matches' is still warned and Git asks users to use a 8 more explicit '.' for that instead. The hope is that existing 9 users will not mind this change, and eventually the warning can be 10 turned into a hard error, upgrading the deprecation into removal of 11 this (mis)feature. That is not scheduled to happen in the upcoming 12 release (yet). 13 14 * The historical argument order "git merge <msg> HEAD <commit>..." 15 has been deprecated for quite some time, and will be removed in a 16 future release. 17 18 19Updates since v2.12 20------------------- 21 22UI, Workflows & Features 23 24 * "git describe" and "git name-rev" have been taught to take more 25 than one refname patterns to restrict the set of refs to base their 26 naming output on, and also learned to take negative patterns to 27 name refs not to be used for naming via their "--exclude" option. 28 29 * Deletion of a branch "foo/bar" could remove .git/refs/heads/foo 30 once there no longer is any other branch whose name begins with 31 "foo/", but we didn't do so so far. Now we do. 32 33 * When "git merge" detects a path that is renamed in one history 34 while the other history deleted (or modified) it, it now reports 35 both paths to help the user understand what is going on in the two 36 histories being merged. 37 38 * The <url> part in "http.<url>.<variable>" configuration variable 39 can now be spelled with '*' that serves as wildcard. 40 E.g. "http.https://*.example.com.proxy" can be used to specify the 41 proxy used for https://a.example.com, https://b.example.com, etc., 42 i.e. any host in the example.com domain. 43 44 * "git tag" did not leave useful message when adding a new entry to 45 reflog; this was left unnoticed for a long time because refs/tags/* 46 doesn't keep reflog by default. 47 48 * The "negative" pathspec feature was somewhat more cumbersome to use 49 than necessary in that its short-hand used "!" which needed to be 50 escaped from shells, and it required "exclude from what?" specified. 51 52 * The command line options for ssh invocation needs to be tweaked for 53 some implementations of SSH (e.g. PuTTY plink wants "-P <port>" 54 while OpenSSH wants "-p <port>" to specify port to connect to), and 55 the variant was guessed when GIT_SSH environment variable is used 56 to specify it. The logic to guess now applies to the command 57 specified by the newer GIT_SSH_COMMAND and also core.sshcommand 58 configuration variable, and comes with an escape hatch for users to 59 deal with misdetected cases. 60 61 * The "--git-path", "--git-common-dir", and "--shared-index-path" 62 options of "git rev-parse" did not produce usable output. They are 63 now updated to show the path to the correct file, relative to where 64 the caller is. 65 66 * "git diff -W" has been taught to handle the case where a new 67 function is added at the end of the file better. 68 69 * "git update-ref -d" and other operations to delete references did 70 not leave any entry in HEAD's reflog when the reference being 71 deleted was the current branch. This is not a problem in practice 72 because you do not want to delete the branch you are currently on, 73 but caused renaming of the current branch to something else not to 74 be logged in a useful way. 75 76 * "Cc:" on the trailer part does not have to conform to RFC strictly, 77 unlike in the e-mail header. "git send-email" has been updated to 78 ignore anything after '>' when picking addresses, to allow non-address 79 cruft like " # stable 4.4" after the address. 80 (merge 9d3343961b jh/send-email-one-cc later to maint). 81 82 * When "git submodule init" decides that the submodule in the working 83 tree is its upstream, it now gives a warning as it is not a very 84 common setup. 85 (merge d1b3b81aab sb/submodule-init-url-selection later to maint). 86 87 * "git stash save" takes a pathspec so that the local changes can be 88 stashed away only partially. 89 (merge 9e140909f6 tg/stash-push later to maint). 90 91 * Documentation for "git ls-files" did not refer to core.quotePath. 92 93 * The experimental "split index" feature has gained a few 94 configuration variables to make it easier to use. 95 96 * From a working tree of a repository, a new option of "rev-parse" 97 lets you ask if the repository is used as a submodule of another 98 project, and where the root level of the working tree of that 99 project (i.e. your superproject) is. 100 101 * The pathspec mechanism learned to further limit the paths that 102 match the pattern to those that have specified attributes attached 103 via the gitattributes mechanism. 104 105 * Our source code has used the SHA1_HEADER cpp macro after "#include" 106 in the C code to switch among the SHA-1 implementations. Instead, 107 list the exact header file names and switch among implementations 108 using "#ifdef BLK_SHA1/#include "block-sha1/sha1.h"/.../#endif"; 109 this helps some IDE tools. 110 111 * The start-up sequence of "git" needs to figure out some configured 112 settings before it finds and set itself up in the location of the 113 repository and was quite messy due to its "chicken-and-egg" nature. 114 The code has been restructured. 115 116 117Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc. 118 119 * The code to list branches in "git branch" has been consolidated 120 with the more generic ref-filter API. 121 122 * Resource usage while enumerating refs from alternate object store 123 has been optimized to help receiving end of "push" that hosts a 124 repository with many "forks". 125 126 * The gitattributes machinery is being taught to work better in a 127 multi-threaded environment. 128 129 * "git rebase -i" starts using the recently updated "sequencer" code. 130 131 * Code and design clean-up for the refs API. 132 133 * The preload-index code has been taught not to bother with the index 134 entries that are paths that are not checked out by "sparse checkout". 135 136 * Some warning() messages from "git clean" were updated to show the 137 errno from failed system calls. 138 139 * The "parse_config_key()" API function has been cleaned up. 140 (merge ad8c7cdadd jk/parse-config-key-cleanup later to maint). 141 142 * A test that creates a confusing branch whose name is HEAD has been 143 corrected not to do so. 144 (merge f0252ca23c jk/t6300-cleanup later to maint). 145 146 * The code that parses header fields in the commit object has been 147 updated for (micro)performance and code hygiene. 148 (merge b072504ce1 rs/commit-parsing-optim later to maint). 149 150 * An helper function to make it easier to append the result from 151 real_path() to a strbuf has been added. 152 (merge 33ad9ddd0b rs/strbuf-add-real-path later to maint). 153 154 * Reduce authentication round-trip over HTTP when the server supports 155 just a single authentication method. This also improves the 156 behaviour when Git is misconfigured to enable http.emptyAuth 157 against a server that does not authenticate without a username 158 (i.e. not using Kerberos etc., which makes http.emptyAuth 159 pointless). 160 161 * Windows port wants to use OpenSSL's implementation of SHA-1 162 routines, so let them. 163 164 * The t/perf performance test suite was not prepared to test not so 165 old versions of Git, but now it covers versions of Git that are not 166 so ancient. 167 (merge 28e1fb5466 jt/perf-updates later to maint). 168 169 * Add 32-bit Linux variant to the set of platforms to be tested with 170 Travis CI. 171 172 * "git branch --list" takes the "--abbrev" and "--no-abbrev" options 173 to control the output of the object name in its "-v"(erbose) 174 output, but a recent update started ignoring them; fix it before 175 the breakage reaches to any released version. 176 177 * Picking two versions of Git and running tests to make sure the 178 older one and the newer one interoperate happily has now become 179 possible. 180 (merge bd4d9d993c jk/interop-test later to maint). 181 182 * "uchar [40]" to "struct object_id" conversion continues. 183 184 * "git tag --contains" used to (ab)use the object bits to keep track 185 of the state of object reachability without clearing them after 186 use; this has been cleaned up and made to use the newer commit-slab 187 facility. 188 189 190Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups. 191 192 193Fixes since v2.12 194----------------- 195 196Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v2.9 in the maintenance 197track are contained in this release (see the maintenance releases' 198notes for details). 199 200 * "git repack --depth=<n>" for a long time busted the specified depth 201 when reusing delta from existing packs. This has been corrected. 202 (merge 42b766d765 jk/delta-chain-limit later to maint). 203 204 * The code to parse the command line "git grep <patterns>... <rev> 205 [[--] <pathspec>...]" has been cleaned up, and a handful of bugs 206 have been fixed (e.g. we used to check "--" if it is a rev). 207 (merge 131f3c96d2 jk/grep-no-index-fix later to maint). 208 209 * "git ls-remote" and "git archive --remote" are designed to work 210 without being in a directory under Git's control. However, recent 211 updates revealed that we randomly look into a directory called 212 .git/ without actually doing necessary set-up when working in a 213 repository. Stop doing so. 214 (merge 4b0c3c7735 jn/remote-helpers-with-git-dir later to maint). 215 216 * "git show-branch" expected there were only very short branch names 217 in the repository and used a fixed-length buffer to hold them 218 without checking for overflow. 219 (merge d3cc5f4c44 jk/show-branch-lift-name-len-limit later to maint). 220 221 * A caller of tempfile API that uses stdio interface to write to 222 files may ignore errors while writing, which is detected when 223 tempfile is closed (with a call to ferror()). By that time, the 224 original errno that may have told us what went wrong is likely to 225 be long gone and was overwritten by an irrelevant value. 226 close_tempfile() now resets errno to EIO to make errno at least 227 predictable. 228 (merge 7e8c9355b7 jk/tempfile-ferror-fclose-confusion later to maint). 229 230 * "git remote rm X", when a branch has remote X configured as the 231 value of its branch.*.remote, tried to remove branch.*.remote and 232 branch.*.merge and failed if either is unset. 233 (merge 20690b2139 rl/remote-allow-missing-branch-name-merge later to maint). 234 235 * A "gc.log" file left by a backgrounded "gc --auto" disables further 236 automatic gc; it has been taught to run at least once a day (by 237 default) by ignoring a stale "gc.log" file that is too old. 238 (merge a831c06a2b dt/gc-ignore-old-gc-logs later to maint). 239 240 * The code to parse "git -c VAR=VAL cmd" and set configuration 241 variable for the duration of cmd had two small bugs, which have 242 been fixed. 243 (merge 1274a155af jc/config-case-cmdline-take-2 later to maint). 244 245 * user.email that consists of only cruft chars should consistently 246 error out, but didn't. 247 (merge 94425552f3 jk/ident-empty later to maint). 248 249 * "git upload-pack", which is a counter-part of "git fetch", did not 250 report a request for a ref that was not advertised as invalid. 251 This is generally not a problem (because "git fetch" will stop 252 before making such a request), but is the right thing to do. 253 (merge bdb31eada7 jt/upload-pack-error-report later to maint). 254 255 * A leak in a codepath to read from a packed object in (rare) cases 256 has been plugged. 257 (merge 886ddf4777 rs/sha1-file-plug-fallback-base-leak later to maint). 258 259 * When a redirected http transport gets an error during the 260 redirected request, we ignored the error we got from the server, 261 and ended up giving a not-so-useful error message. 262 263 * The patch subcommand of "git add -i" was meant to have paths 264 selection prompt just like other subcommand, unlike "git add -p" 265 directly jumps to hunk selection. Recently, this was broken and 266 "add -i" lost the paths selection dialog, but it now has been 267 fixed. 268 269 * Git v2.12 was shipped with an embarrassing breakage where various 270 operations that verify paths given from the user stopped dying when 271 seeing an issue, and instead later triggering segfault. 272 273 * There is no need for Python only to give a few messages to the 274 standard error stream, but we somehow did. 275 (merge b8686c661d ss/remote-bzr-hg-placeholder-wo-python later to maint). 276 277 * The code to parse "git log -L..." command line was buggy when there 278 are many ranges specified with -L; overrun of the allocated buffer 279 has been fixed. 280 281 * The command-line parsing of "git log -L" copied internal data 282 structures using incorrect size on ILP32 systems. 283 284 * "git diff --quiet" relies on the size field in diff_filespec to be 285 correctly populated, but diff_populate_filespec() helper function 286 made an incorrect short-cut when asked only to populate the size 287 field for paths that need to go through convert_to_git() (e.g. CRLF 288 conversion). 289 (merge 12426e114b jc/diff-populate-filespec-size-only-fix later to maint). 290 291 * A few tests were run conditionally under (rare) conditions where 292 they cannot be run (like running cvs tests under 'root' account). 293 (merge c6507484a2 ab/cond-skip-tests later to maint). 294 295 * "git branch @" created refs/heads/@ as a branch, and in general the 296 code that handled @{-1} and @{upstream} was a bit too loose in 297 disambiguating. 298 (merge fd4692ff70 jk/interpret-branch-name later to maint). 299 300 * "git fetch" that requests a commit by object name, when the other 301 side does not allow such an request, failed without much 302 explanation. 303 (merge d56583ded6 mm/fetch-show-error-message-on-unadvertised-object later to maint). 304 305 * "git filter-branch --prune-empty" drops a single-parent commit that 306 becomes a no-op, but did not drop a root commit whose tree is empty. 307 (merge 32da7467eb dp/filter-branch-prune-empty later to maint). 308 309 * Recent versions of Git treats http alternates (used in dumb http 310 transport) just like HTTP redirects and requires the client to 311 enable following it, due to security concerns. But we forgot to 312 give a warning when we decide not to honor the alternates. 313 (merge 5cae73d5d2 ew/http-alternates-as-redirects-warning later to maint). 314 315 * "git push" had a handful of codepaths that could lead to a deadlock 316 when unexpected error happened, which has been fixed. 317 (merge d1a13d3fcb jk/push-deadlock-regression-fix later to maint). 318 319 * "Dumb http" transport used to misparse a nonsense http-alternates 320 response, which has been fixed. 321 (merge d61434ae81 jk/http-walker-buffer-underflow-fix later to maint). 322 323 * "git add -p <pathspec>" unnecessarily expanded the pathspec to a 324 list of individual files that matches the pathspec by running "git 325 ls-files <pathspec>", before feeding it to "git diff-index" to see 326 which paths have changes, because historically the pathspec 327 language supported by "diff-index" was weaker. These days they are 328 equivalent and there is no reason to internally expand it. This 329 helps both performance and avoids command line argument limit on 330 some platforms. 331 (merge 7288e12cce jk/add-i-use-pathspecs later to maint). 332 333 * "git status --porcelain" is supposed to give a stable output, but a 334 few strings were left as translatable by mistake. 335 (merge b9e2bc560a mg/status-porcelain-no-i18n later to maint). 336 337 * Other minor doc, test and build updates and code cleanups. 338 (merge b803ae4427 ps/docs-diffcore later to maint). 339 (merge bcd886d897 ew/markdown-url-in-readme later to maint). 340 (merge b2d593a779 rj/remove-unused-mktemp later to maint). 341 (merge 3255e512a8 jk/ewah-use-right-type-in-sizeof later to maint). 342 (merge dfa3ad3238 rs/blame-code-cleanup later to maint).