"git branch --set-upstream" is deprecated and may be removed in a
relatively distant future. "git branch [-u|--set-upstream-to]" has
-been introduced with a saner order of arguments.
+been introduced with a saner order of arguments to replace it.
Updates since v1.8.0
UI, Workflows & Features
+ * Command-line completion scripts for tcsh and zsh have been added.
+
+ * "git-prompt" scriptlet (in contrib/completion) can be told to paint
+ pieces of the hints in the prompt string in colors.
+
+ * Some documentation pages that used to ship only in the plain text
+ format are now formatted in HTML as well.
+
* We used to have a workaround for a bug in ancient "less" that
causes it to exit without any output when the terminal is resized.
The bug has been fixed in "less" version 406 (June 2007), and the
workaround has been removed in this release.
- * Some documentation pages that used to ship only in the plain text
- format are now formatted in HTML as well.
+ * When "git checkout" checks out a branch, it tells the user how far
+ behind (or ahead) the new branch is relative to the remote tracking
+ branch it builds upon. The message now also advises how to sync
+ them up by pushing or pulling. This can be disabled with the
+ advice.statusHints configuration variable.
+
+ * "git config --get" used to diagnose presence of multiple
+ definitions of the same variable in the same configuration file as
+ an error, but it now applies the "last one wins" rule used by the
+ internal configuration logic. Strictly speaking, this may be an
+ API regression but it is expected that nobody will notice it in
+ practice.
* A new configuration variable "diff.context" can be used to
give the default number of context lines in the patch output, to
* "git format-patch" learned the "--notes=<ref>" option to give
notes for the commit after the three-dash lines in its output.
+ * "git log -p -S<string>" now looks for the <string> after applying
+ the textconv filter (if defined); earlier it inspected the contents
+ of the blobs without filtering.
+
* "git log --grep=<pcre>" learned to honor the "grep.patterntype"
configuration set to "perl".
- * "git replace -d <object>" now interprets <object>, instead of only
- accepting full hex object name.
+ * "git replace -d <object>" now interprets <object> as an extended
+ SHA-1 (e.g. HEAD~4 is allowed), instead of only accepting full hex
+ object name.
* "git rm $submodule" used to punt on removing a submodule working
tree to avoid losing the repository embedded in it. Because
recent git uses a mechanism to separate the submodule repository
from the submodule working tree, "git rm" learned to detect this
- case and removes the submodule working tree when it is safe.
+ case and removes the submodule working tree when it is safe to do so.
+
+ * "git send-email" used to prompt for the sender address, even when
+ the committer identity is well specified (e.g. via user.name and
+ user.email configuration variables). The command no longer gives
+ this prompt when not necessary.
+
+ * "git send-email" did not allow non-address garbage strings to
+ appear after addresses on Cc: lines in the patch files (and when
+ told to pick them up to find more recipients), e.g.
+
+ Cc: Stable Kernel <stable@k.org> # for v3.2 and up
+
+ The command now strips " # for v3.2 and up" part before adding the
+ remainder of this line to the list of recipients.
* "git submodule add" learned to add a new submodule at the same
path as the path where an unrelated submodule was bound to in an
* "git submodule sync" learned the "--recursive" option.
+ * "diff.submodule" configuration variable can be used to give custom
+ default value to the "git diff --submodule" option.
+
* "git symbolic-ref" learned the "-d $symref" option to delete the
named symbolic ref, which is more intuitive way to spell it than
- "update-ref -d --no-deref".
+ "update-ref -d --no-deref $symref".
Foreign Interface
* The remote helper interface to interact with subversion
repositories (one of the GSoC 2012 projects) has been merged.
+ * A new remote-helper interface for Mercurial has been added to
+ contrib/remote-helpers.
+
+ * The documentation for git(1) was pointing at a page at an external
+ site for the list of authors that no longer existed. The link has
+ been updated to point at an alternative site.
+
Performance, Internal Implementation, etc.
* Compilation on Cygwin with newer header files are supported now.
- * The logic to generate the initial advertisement from
- "upload-pack" (what is invoked by "git fetch" on the other side
- of the connection) to list what refs are available in the
- repository has been optimized.
+ * A couple of low-level implementation updates on MinGW.
+
+ * The logic to generate the initial advertisement from "upload-pack"
+ (i.e. what is invoked by "git fetch" on the other side of the
+ connection) to list what refs are available in the repository has
+ been optimized.
* The logic to find set of attributes that match a given path has
been optimized.
* The configuration parser had an unnecessary hardcoded limit on
variable names that was not checked consistently.
- (merge 0971e99 bw/config-lift-variable-name-length-limit later to maint).
* The "say" function in the test scaffolding incorrectly allowed
"echo" to interpret "\a" as if it were a C-string asking for a
BEL output.
- (merge 7bc0911 jc/test-say-color-avoid-echo-escape later to maint).
* "git mergetool" feeds /dev/null as a common ancestor when dealing
with an add/add conflict, but p4merge backend cannot handle
it. Work it around by passing a temporary empty file.
- (merge 3facc60 da/mergetools-p4 later to maint).
* "git log -F -E --grep='<ere>'" failed to use the given <ere>
pattern as extended regular expression, and instead looked for the
string literally.
- (merge 727b6fc jc/grep-pcre-loose-ends~1 later to maint).
* "git grep -e pattern <tree>" asked the attribute system to read
"<tree>:.gitattributes" file in the working tree, which was
nonsense.
- (merge 55c6168 nd/grep-true-path later to maint).
* A symbolic ref refs/heads/SYM was not correctly removed with "git
branch -d SYM"; the command removed the ref pointed by SYM
instead.
- (merge 13baa9f rs/branch-del-symref later to maint).
* Update "remote tracking branch" in the documentation to
"remote-tracking branch".
- (merge a6d3bde mm/maint-doc-remote-tracking later to maint).
* "git pull --rebase" run while the HEAD is detached tried to find
the upstream branch of the detached HEAD (which by definition
does not exist) and emitted unnecessary error messages.
- (merge e980765 ph/pull-rebase-detached later to maint).
* The refs/replace hierarchy was not mentioned in the
repository-layout docs.
- (merge 11fbe18 po/maint-refs-replace-docs later to maint).
* Various rfc2047 quoting issues around a non-ASCII name on the
From: line in the output from format-patch have been corrected.
- (merge 25dc8da js/format-2047 later to maint).
* Sometimes curl_multi_timeout() function suggested a wrong timeout
value when there is no file descriptor to wait on and the http
transport ended up sleeping for minutes in select(2) system call.
A workaround has been added for this.
- (merge 7202b81 sz/maint-curl-multi-timeout later to maint).
* For a fetch refspec (or the result of applying wildcard on one),
we always want the RHS to map to something inside "refs/"
* "git diff -G<pattern>" did not honor textconv filter when looking
for changes.
- (merge b1c2f57 jk/maint-diff-grep-textconv later to maint).
* Some HTTP servers ask for auth only during the actual packing phase
(not in ls-remote phase); this is not really a recommended
* "git p4" used to try expanding malformed "$keyword$" that spans
across multiple lines.
- (merge 6b2bf41 pw/maint-p4-rcs-expansion-newline later to maint).
* Syntax highlighting in "gitweb" was not quite working.
- (merge 048b399 rh/maint-gitweb-highlight-ext later to maint).
* RSS feed from "gitweb" had a xss hole in its title output.
- (merge 0f0ecf6 jk/maint-gitweb-xss later to maint).
* "git config --path $key" segfaulted on "[section] key" (a boolean
"true" spelled without "=", not "[section] key = true").
- (merge 962c38e cn/config-missing-path later to maint).
* "git checkout -b foo" while on an unborn branch did not say
"Switched to a new branch 'foo'" like other cases.
- (merge afa8c07 jk/checkout-out-of-unborn later to maint).
+
+ * Various codepaths have workaround for a common misconfiguration to
+ spell "UTF-8" as "utf8", but it was not used uniformly. Most
+ notably, mailinfo (which is used by "git am") lacked this support.
+
+ * We failed to mention a file without any content change but whose
+ permission bit was modified, or (worse yet) a new file without any
+ content in the "git diff --stat" output.
+
+ * When "--stat-count" hides a diffstat for binary contents, the total
+ number of added and removed lines at the bottom was computed
+ incorrectly.
+
+ * When "--stat-count" hides a diffstat for unmerged paths, the total
+ number of affected files at the bottom of the "diff --stat" output
+ was computed incorrectly.
+
+ * "diff --shortstat" miscounted the total number of affected files
+ when there were unmerged paths.
+
+ * "update-ref -d --deref SYM" to delete a ref through a symbolic ref
+ that points to it did not remove it correctly.