UI, Workflows & Features
+ * "git archive" learned to filter what gets archived with pathspec.
+
* "git config --edit --global" starts from a skeletal per-user
configuration file contents, instead of a total blank, when the
user does not already have any. This immediately reduces the
the difference between the base commit version and the working tree
version, which is in line with what "git show" gives.
+ * Sometimes users want to report a bug they experience on their
+ repository, but they are not at liberty to share the contents of
+ the repository. "fast-export" was taught an "--anonymize" option
+ to replace blob contents, names of people and paths and log
+ messages with bland and simple strings to help them.
+
+ * "log --date=iso" uses a slight variant of ISO 8601 format that is
+ made more human readable. A new "--date=iso-strict" option gives
+ datetime output that is more strictly conformant.
+
+ * A broken reimplementation of Git could write an invalid index that
+ records both stage #0 and higher stage entries for the same path.
+ We now notice and reject such an index, as there is no sensible
+ fallback (we do not know if the broken tool wanted to resolve and
+ forgot to remove higher stage entries, or if it wanted to unresolve
+ and forgot to remove the stage#0 entry).
+
+ * The "pre-receive" and "post-receive" hooks are no longer required
+ to consume their input fully (not following this requirement used
+ to result in intermittent errors in "git push").
+
+ * The pretty-format specifier "%d", which expanded to " (tagname)"
+ for a tagged commit, gained a cousin "%D" that just gives the
+ "tagname" without frills.
+
+ * "git push" learned "--signed" push, that allows a push (i.e.
+ request to update the refs on the other side to point at a new
+ history, together with the transmission of necessary objects) to be
+ signed, so that it can be verified and audited, using the GPG
+ signature of the person who pushed, that the tips of branches at a
+ public repository really point the commits the pusher wanted to,
+ without having to "trust" the server.
+
Performance, Internal Implementation, etc.
* The API to manipulate the "refs" is currently undergoing a revamp
all-or-none atomic updates and migrating the storage to something
other than the traditional filesystem based one (e.g. databases).
+ * The lockfile API and its users have been cleaned up.
+
* We no longer attempt to keep track of individual dependencies to
the header files in the build procedure, relying on automated
dependency generation support from modern compilers.
"write-tree" (used in "commit") and "diff-index --cached" (used in
"status").
+ * A common programming mistake to assign the same short option name
+ to two separate options is detected by parse_options() API to help
+ developers.
+
+ * The code path to write out the packed-refs file has been optimized,
+ which especially matters in a repository with a large number of
+ refs.
+
+ * The check to see if a ref $F can be created by making sure no
+ existing ref has $F/ as its prefix has been optimized, which
+ especially matters in a repository with a large number of existing
+ refs.
+
+ * "git fsck" was taught to check contents of tag objects a bit more.
+
+ * "git hash-object" was taught a "--literally" option to help
+ debugging.
+
+ * When running a required clean filter, we do not have to mmap the
+ original before feeding the filter. Instead, stream the file
+ contents directly to the filter and process its output.
Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups.
* "git log --pretty/format=" with an empty format string did not
mean the more obvious "No output whatsoever" but "Use default
format", which was counterintuitive.
- (merge b9c7d6e jk/pretty-empty-format later to maint).
* Implementations of "tar" that do not understand an extended pax
header would extract the contents of it in a regular file; make
* "git -c section.var command" and "git -c section.var= command"
should pass the configuration differently (the former should be a
boolean true, the latter should be an empty string).
- (merge a789ca7 jk/command-line-config-empty-string later to maint).
* Applying a patch not generated by Git in a subdirectory used to
check the whitespace breakage using the attributes for incorrect
paths. Also whitespace checks were performed even for paths
excluded via "git apply --exclude=<path>" mechanism.
- (merge 477a08a jc/apply-ws-prefix later to maint).
* "git bundle create" with date-range specification were meant to
exclude tags outside the range, but it didn't.
- (merge 2c8544a lf/bundle-exclusion later to maint).
* "git add x" where x that used to be a directory has become a
symbolic link to a directory misbehaved.
- (merge ccad42d rs/refresh-beyond-symlink later to maint).
* The prompt script checked $GIT_DIR/ref/stash file to see if there
is a stash, which was a no-no.
- (merge 0fa7f01 jk/prompt-stash-could-be-packed later to maint).
* Pack-protocol documentation had a minor typo.
- (merge 5d146f7 sp/pack-protocol-doc-on-shallow later to maint).
* "git checkout -m" did not switch to another branch while carrying
the local changes forward when a path was deleted from the index.
- (merge 6a143aa jn/unpack-trees-checkout-m-carry-deletion later to maint).
+
+ * "git daemon" (with NO_IPV6 build configuration) used to incorrectly
+ use the hostname even when gethostbyname() reported that the given
+ hostname is not found.
+ (merge 107efbe rs/daemon-fixes later to maint).
* With sufficiently long refnames, "git fast-import" could have
overflown an on-stack buffer.
- (merge c252785 jk/fast-import-fixes later to maint).
* After "pack-refs --prune" packed refs at the top-level, it failed
to prune them.
- (merge afd11d3 jk/prune-top-level-refs-after-packing later to maint).
* Progress output from "git gc --auto" was visible in "git fetch -q".
- (merge 6fceed3 nd/fetch-pass-quiet-to-gc-child-process later to maint).
* We used to pass -1000 to poll(2), expecting it to also mean "no
timeout", which should be spelled as -1.
- (merge 6c71f8b et/spell-poll-infinite-with-minus-one-only later to maint).
+
+ * "git rebase" documentation was unclear that it is required to
+ specify on what <upstream> the rebase is to be done when telling it
+ to first check out <branch>.
+ (merge 95c6826 so/rebase-doc later to maint).
+
+ * "git push" over HTTP transport had an artificial limit on number of
+ refs that can be pushed imposed by the command line length.
+ (merge 26be19b jk/send-pack-many-refspecs later to maint).
+
+ * When receiving an invalid pack stream that records the same object
+ twice, multiple threads got confused due to a race.
+ (merge ab791dd jk/index-pack-threading-races later to maint).
+
+ * An attempt to remove the entire tree in the "git fast-import" input
+ stream caused it to misbehave.
+ (merge 2668d69 mb/fast-import-delete-root later to maint).
+
+ * Reachability check (used in "git prune" and friends) did not add a
+ detached HEAD as a starting point to traverse objects still in use.
+ (merge c40fdd0 mk/reachable-protect-detached-head later to maint).
+
+ * "git config --add section.var val" used to lose existing
+ section.var whose value was an empty string.
+ (merge c1063be ta/config-add-to-empty-or-true-fix later to maint).
+
+ * "git fsck" failed to report that it found corrupt objects via its
+ exit status in some cases.
+ (merge 30d1038 jk/fsck-exit-code-fix later to maint).
+
+ * Use of "--verbose" option used to break "git branch --merged".
+ (merge 12994dd jk/maint-branch-verbose-merged later to maint).
+
+ * Some MUAs mangled a line in a message that begins with "From " to
+ ">From " when writing to a mailbox file and feeding such an input
+ to "git am" used to lose such a line.
+ (merge 85de86a jk/mbox-from-line later to maint).
+
+ * "rev-parse --verify --quiet $name" is meant to quietly exit with a
+ non-zero status when $name is not a valid object name, but still
+ gave error messages in some cases.
+
+ * A handful of C source files have been updated to include
+ "git-compat-util.h" as the first thing, to conform better to our
+ coding guidelines.
+ (merge 1c4b660 da/include-compat-util-first-in-c later to maint).
+
+ * t7004 test, which tried to run Git with small stack space, has been
+ updated to give a bit larger stack to avoid false breakage on some
+ platforms.
+ (merge b9a1907 sk/tag-contains-wo-recursion later to maint).
+
+ * A few documentation pages had example sections marked up not quite
+ correctly, which passed AsciiDoc but failed with AsciiDoctor.
+ (merge c30c43c bc/asciidoc-pretty-formats-fix later to maint).