Git 2.16 Release Notes
======================

Backward compatibility notes and other notable changes.

 * Use of an empty string as a pathspec element that is used for
   'everything matches' is now an error.


Updates since v2.15
-------------------

UI, Workflows & Features

 * An empty string as a pathspec element that means "everything"
   i.e. 'git add ""', is now illegal.  We started this by first
   deprecating and warning a pathspec that has such an element in
   2.11 (Nov 2016).

 * A hook script that is set unexecutable is simply ignored.  Git
   notifies when such a file is ignored, unless the message is
   squelched via advice.ignoredHook configuration.

 * "git pull" has been taught to accept "--[no-]signoff" option and
   pass it down to "git merge".

 * The "--push-option=<string>" option to "git push" now defaults to a
   list of strings configured via push.pushOption variable.

 * "gitweb" checks if a directory is searchable with Perl's "-x"
   operator, which can be enhanced by using "filetest 'access'"
   pragma, which now we do.

 * "git stash save" has been deprecated in favour of "git stash push".


Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc.

 * An earlier update made it possible to use an on-stack in-core
   lockfile structure (as opposed to having to deliberately leak an
   on-heap one).  Many codepaths have been updated to take advantage
   of this new facility.

 * Calling cmd_foo() as if it is a general purpose helper function is
   a no-no.  Correct two instances of such to set an example.

 * We try to see if somebody runs our test suite with a shell that
   does not support "local" like bash/dash does.

 * An early part of piece-by-piece rewrite of "git bisect" in C.

 * GSoC to piece-by-piece rewrite "git submodule" in C.

 * Optimize the code to find shortest unique prefix of object names.

 * Pathspec-limited revision traversal was taught not to keep finding
   unneeded differences once it knows two trees are different inside
   given pathspec.

 * Conversion from uchar[20] to struct object_id continues.


Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups.


Fixes since v2.15
-----------------

 * "auto" as a value for the columnar output configuration ought to
   judge "is the output consumed by humans?" with the same criteria as
   "auto" for coloured output configuration, i.e. either the standard
   output stream is going to tty, or a pager is in use.  We forgot the
   latter, which has been fixed.
   (merge 965ff23a43 kd/auto-col-with-pager-fix later to maint).

 * The experimental "color moved lines differently in diff output"
   feature was buggy around "ignore whitespace changes" edges, whihch
   has been corrected.
   (merge b66b507292 jk/diff-color-moved-fix later to maint).

 * Instead of using custom line comparison and hashing functions to
   implement "moved lines" coloring in the diff output, use the pair
   of these functions from lower-layer xdiff/ code.
   (merge 01be97c2b2 sb/diff-color-moved-use-xdl-recmatch later to maint).

 * Some codepaths did not check for errors when asking what branch the
   HEAD points at, which have been fixed.
   (merge dbd2b55cb7 jk/misc-resolve-ref-unsafe-fixes later to maint).

 * "git commit", after making a commit, did not check for errors when
   asking on what branch it made the commit, which has been correted.
   (merge c26de08370 ao/check-resolve-ref-unsafe-result later to maint).

 * "git status --ignored -u" did not stop at a working tree of a
   separate project that is embedded in an ignored directory and
   listed files in that other project, instead of just showing the
   directory itself as ignored.
   (merge fadb4820c4 js/submodule-in-excluded later to maint).

 * A broken access to object databases in recent update to "git grep
   --recurse-submodules" has been fixed.
   (merge 9560e6245a bw/grep-recurse-submodules later to maint).

 * A recent regression in "git rebase -i" that broke execution of git
   commands from subdirectories via "exec" insn has been fixed.
   (merge 09d7b6c6fa jk/rebase-i-exec-gitdir-fix later to maint).

 * A (possibly flakey) test fix.
   (merge cff48ccf2a jc/t5601-copy-workaround later to maint).

 * "git check-ref-format --branch @{-1}" bit a "BUG()" when run
   outside a repository for obvious reasons; clarify the documentation
   and make sure we do not even try to expand the at-mark magic in
   such a case, but still call the validation logic for branch names.
   (merge 89dd32aedc jc/check-ref-format-oor later to maint).

 * "git fetch --recurse-submodules" now knows that submodules can be
   moved around in the superproject in addition to getting updated,
   and finds the ones that need to be fetched accordingly.
   (merge 4b4acedd61 hv/fetch-moved-submodules-on-demand later to maint).

 * Command line completion (in contrib/) update.
   (merge 6357d9d004 tb/complete-checkout later to maint).

 * Other minor doc, test and build updates and code cleanups.
   (merge bab76141da cn/diff-indent-no-longer-is-experimental later to maint).