Backward compatibility notes
----------------------------
-In the upcoming major release (tentatively called 1.8.2), we will
-change the behavior of the "git push" command.
+In the next major release Git 2.0 (not *this* one), we will change the
+behavior of the "git push" command.
When "git push [$there]" does not say what to push, we have used the
traditional "matching" semantics so far (all your branches were sent
"git push $there tag v1.2.3" used to allow replacing a tag v1.2.3
that already exists in the repository $there, if the rewritten tag
-you are pushing points at a commit that is a decendant of a commit
+you are pushing points at a commit that is a descendant of a commit
that the old tag v1.2.3 points at. This was found to be error prone
and starting with this release, any attempt to update an existing
ref under refs/tags/ hierarchy will fail, without "--force".
+When "git add -u" and "git add -A", that does not specify what paths
+to add on the command line, is run from inside a subdirectory, the
+scope of the operation has always been limited to the subdirectory.
+Many users found this counter-intuitive, given that "git commit -a"
+and other commands operate on the entire tree regardless of where you
+are. In this release, these commands give warning in such a case and
+encourage the user to say "git add -u/-A ." instead when restricting
+the scope to the current directory. At Git 2.0 (not *this* one), we
+plan to change these commands without pathspec to operate on the
+entire tree, and training your fingers to type "." will protect you
+against the future change.
+
Updates since v1.8.1
--------------------
* "git commit" can be told to use --cleanup=whitespace by setting the
configuration variable commit.cleanup to 'whitespace'.
+ * "git diff" and other Porcelain commands can be told to use a
+ non-standard algorithm by setting diff.algorithm configuration
+ variable.
+
* "git fetch --mirror" and fetch that uses other forms of refspec
with wildcard used to attempt to update a symbolic ref that match
the wildcard on the receiving end, which made little sense (the
string "v$count-" to the names of its output files, and also
automatically sets the subject prefix to "PATCH v$count". This
allows patches from rerolled series to be stored under different
- names and makes it easier to reuse cover letter messsages.
+ names and makes it easier to reuse cover letter messages.
* "git log" and friends can be told with --use-mailmap option to
rewrite the names and email addresses of people using the mailmap
* "git log --cc --graph" now shows the combined diff output with the
ancestry graph.
+ * "git log --grep=<pattern>" honors i18n.logoutputencoding to look
+ for the pattern after fixing the log message to the specified
+ encoding.
+
* "git mergetool" and "git difftool" learned to list the available
tool backends in a more consistent manner.
tip of the remote branch (as opposed to integrating with the commit
recorded in the superproject's gitlink).
+ * "git upload-pack" which implements the service "ls-remote" and
+ "fetch" talk to can be told to hide ref hierarchies the server
+ side internally uses (and that clients have no business learning
+ about) with transfer.hiderefs configuration.
+
Foreign Interface
* The smart HTTP clients forgot to verify the content-type that comes
back from the server side to make sure that the request is being
handled properly.
- (merge 3443db5 sp/smart-http-content-type-check later to maint).
* "git am" did not parse datestamp correctly from Hg generated patch,
when it is run in a locale outside C (or en).
* "git apply --summary" has been taught to make sure the similarity
value shown in its output is sensible, even when the input had a
bogus value.
- (merge afcb6ac jk/apply-similaritly-parsing later to maint).
* A tar archive created by "git archive" recorded a directory in a
way that made NetBSD's implementation of "tar" sometimes unhappy.
untracked directory, it found an embedded git repository there
which it is not allowed to remove). It now performs the actions
and then reports the outcome more faithfully.
- (merge f538a91 zk/clean-report-failure later to maint).
* When "git clone --separate-git-dir=$over_there" is interrupted, it
failed to remove the real location of the $GIT_DIR it created.
This was most visible when interrupting a submodule update.
* "git cvsimport" mishandled timestamps at DST boundary.
- (merge 48c9162 bw/get-tz-offset-perl later to maint).
* We used to have an arbitrary 32 limit for combined diff input,
resulting in incorrect number of leading colons shown when showing
the "--raw --cc" output.
- (merge edbc00e jc/combine-diff-many-parents later to maint).
* "git fetch --depth" was broken in at least three ways. The
resulting history was deeper than specified by one commit, it was
* "git log --all -p" that walked refs/notes/textconv/ ref can later
try to use the textconv data incorrectly after it gets freed.
- (merge be5c9fb jk/read-commit-buffer-data-after-free later to maint).
* We forgot to close the file descriptor reading from "gpg" output,
killing "git log --show-signature" on a long history.
* "git clone" used to allow --bare and --separate-git-dir=$there
options at the same time, which was nonsensical.
- (merge 95b63f1 nd/clone-no-separate-git-dir-with-bare later to maint).
* "git rebase --preserve-merges" lost empty merges in recent versions
of Git.
* "gitweb" pages served over HTTPS, when configured to show picon or
gravatar, referred to these external resources to be fetched via
HTTP, resulting in mixed contents warning in browsers.
- (merge 5748558 ab/gitweb-use-same-scheme later to maint).
* When a line to be wrapped has a solid run of non space characters
whose length exactly is the wrap width, "git shortlog -w" failed
* "git push" was taught to refuse updating the branch that is
currently checked out long time ago, but the user manual was left
stale.
- (merge d9be248 wk/man-deny-current-branch-is-default-these-days later to maint).
+ (merge 50995ed wk/man-deny-current-branch-is-default-these-days later to maint).
* Some shells do not behave correctly when IFS is unset; work it
around by explicitly setting it to the default value.
* The autoconf subsystem passed --mandir down to generated
config.mak.autogen but forgot to do the same for --htmldir.
- (merge fc1c541 ct/autoconf-htmldir later to maint).
+ (merge 55d9bf0 ct/autoconf-htmldir later to maint).
+
+ * A change made on v1.8.1.x maintenance track had a nasty regression
+ to break the build when autoconf is used.
+ (merge 7f1b697 jn/less-reconfigure later to maint).
* We have been carrying a translated and long-unmaintained copy of an
old version of the tutorial; removed.