Git v1.8.2 Release Notes
========================
-Backward compatibility notes
-----------------------------
-
-In the upcoming major release (tentatively called 1.8.2), 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
-to the remote as long as there already are branches of the same name
-over there). We will use the "simple" semantics that pushes the
-current branch to the branch with the same name, only when the current
-branch is set to integrate with that remote branch. There is a user
-preference configuration variable "push.default" to change this.
+Backward compatibility notes (this release)
+-------------------------------------------
"git push $there tag v1.2.3" used to allow replacing a tag v1.2.3
that already exists in the repository $there, if the rewritten tag
-you are pushing points at a commit that is a decendant of a commit
+you are pushing points at a commit that is a descendant of a commit
that the old tag v1.2.3 points at. This was found to be error prone
and starting with this release, any attempt to update an existing
ref under refs/tags/ hierarchy will fail, without "--force".
+When "git add -u" and "git add -A" that does not specify what paths
+to add on the command line is run from inside a subdirectory, the
+scope of the operation has always been limited to the subdirectory.
+Many users found this counter-intuitive, given that "git commit -a"
+and other commands operate on the entire tree regardless of where you
+are. In this release, these commands give a warning message that
+suggests the users to use "git add -u/-A ." when they want to limit
+the scope to the current directory; doing so will squelch the message,
+while training their fingers.
+
+
+Backward compatibility notes (for Git 2.0)
+------------------------------------------
+
+When "git push [$there]" does not say what to push, we have used the
+traditional "matching" semantics so far (all your branches were sent
+to the remote as long as there already are branches of the same name
+over there). In Git 2.0, the default will change to the "simple"
+semantics that pushes the current branch to the branch with the same
+name, only when the current branch is set to integrate with that
+remote branch. There is a user preference configuration variable
+"push.default" to change this. If you are an old-timer who is used
+to the "matching" semantics, you can set it to "matching" to keep the
+traditional behaviour. If you want to live in the future early,
+you can set it to "simple" today without waiting for Git 2.0.
+
+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, these
+commands will operate on the entire tree in Git 2.0 for consistency
+with "git commit -a" and other commands. Because there will be no
+mechanism to make "git add -u" behave as if "git add -u .", it is
+important for those who are used to "git add -u" (without pathspec)
+updating the index only for paths in the current subdirectory to start
+training their fingers to explicitly say "git add -u ." when they mean
+it before Git 2.0 comes.
+
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
these implementations can reliably update. This can be used to
avoid excessive revalidation of contents.
+ * Some platforms ship with old version of expat where xmlparse.h
+ needs to be included instead of expat.h; the build procedure has
+ been taught about this.
+
+ * "make clean" on platforms that cannot compute header dependencies
+ on the fly did not work with implementations of "rm" that do not
+ like an empty argument list.
Also contains minor documentation updates and code clean-ups.
* 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
* Command line completion code was inadvertently made incompatible with
older versions of bash by using a newer array notation.
+ * "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 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.
* Scripts to test bash completion was inherently flaky as it was
affected by whatever random things the user may have on $PATH.
+
+ * An element on GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES could be a "logical" pathname
+ that uses a symbolic link to point at somewhere else (e.g. /home/me
+ that points at /net/host/export/home/me, and the latter directory
+ is automounted). Earlier when Git saw such a pathname e.g. /home/me
+ on this environment variable, the "ceiling" mechanism did not take
+ effect. With this release (the fix has also been merged to the
+ v1.8.1.x maintenance series), elements on GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES
+ are by default checked for such aliasing coming from symbolic
+ links. As this needs to actually resolve symbolic links for each
+ element on the GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES, you can disable this
+ mechanism for some elements by listing them after an empty element
+ on the GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES. e.g. Setting /home/me::/home/him to
+ GIT_CEILING_DIRECTORIES makes Git resolve symbolic links in
+ /home/me when checking if the current directory is under /home/me,
+ but does not do so for /home/him.
+ (merge 7ec30aa mh/maint-ceil-absolute later to maint).