Git 2.4 Release Notes
=====================
+Backward compatibility warning(s)
+---------------------------------
+
+This release has a few changes in the user-visible output from
+Porcelain commands. These are not meant to be parsed by scripts, but
+users still may want to be aware of the changes:
+
+ * The output from "git log --decorate" (and, more generally, the "%d"
+ format specifier used in the "--format=<string>" parameter to the
+ "git log" family of commands) has changed. It used to list "HEAD"
+ just like other branches; e.g.,
+
+ $ git log --decorate -1 master
+ commit bdb0f6788fa5e3cacc4315e9ff318a27b2676ff4 (HEAD, master)
+ ...
+
+ This release changes the output slightly when HEAD refers to a
+ branch whose name is also shown in the output. The above is now
+ shown as:
+
+ $ git log --decorate -1 master
+ commit bdb0f6788fa5e3cacc4315e9ff318a27b2676ff4 (HEAD -> master)
+ ...
+
+ * The phrasing "git branch" uses to describe a detached HEAD has been
+ updated to agree with the phrasing used by "git status":
+
+ - When HEAD is at the same commit as when it was originally
+ detached, they now both show "detached at <commit object name>".
+
+ - When HEAD has moved since it was originally detached, they now
+ both show "detached from <commit object name>".
+
+ Previously, "git branch" always used "from".
+
+
Updates since v2.3
------------------
platforms with smaller SSIZE_MAX, leading to read(2)/write(2)
failures.
- * We did not check the curl library version before using
- CURLOPT_PROXYAUTH feature that may not exist.
+ * We did not check the curl library version before using the
+ CURLOPT_PROXYAUTH feature, which did not exist in older versions of
+ the library.
+
+ * We now detect number of CPUs on older BSD-derived systems.
+
+ * Portability fixes and workarounds for shell scripts have been added
+ to help BSD-derived systems.
UI, Workflows & Features
* "git log --invert-grep --grep=WIP" will show only commits that do
not have the string "WIP" in their messages.
- * "git push" has been taught a "--atomic" option that makes push to
- update more than one ref an "all-or-none" affair.
+ * "git push" has been taught an "--atomic" option that makes a push
+ that updates more than one ref an "all-or-none" affair.
- * Extending the "push to deploy" added in 2.3, the behaviour of "git
- push" when updating the branch that is checked out can now be
- tweaked by push-to-checkout hook.
+ * Extending the "push to deploy" feature that was added in 2.3, the
+ behaviour of "git push" when updating the branch that is checked
+ out can now be tweaked by a "push-to-checkout" hook.
- * Using environment variable LANGUAGE and friends on the client side,
- HTTP-based transports now send Accept-Language when making requests.
+ * HTTP-based transports now send Accept-Language when making
+ requests. The languages to accept are inferred from environment
+ variables on the client side (LANGUAGE, etc).
* "git send-email" used to accept a mistaken "y" (or "yes") as an
- answer to "What encoding do you want to use [UTF-8]? " without
- questioning. Now it asks for confirmation when the answer looks
- too short to be a valid encoding name.
+ answer to "What encoding do you want to use [UTF-8]?" without
+ questioning. Now it asks for confirmation when the answer looks too
+ short to be a valid encoding name.
* When "git apply --whitespace=fix" fixed whitespace errors in the
common context lines, the command reports that it did so.
- * "git status" now allows the "-v" to be given twice to show the
- differences that are left in the working tree not to be committed.
+ * "git status" now allows the "-v" option to be given twice, in which
+ case it also shows the differences in the working tree that are not
+ staged to be committed.
- * "git cherry-pick" used to clean-up the log message even when it is
- merely replaying an existing commit. It now replays the message
- verbatim unless you are editing the message of resulting commits.
+ * "git cherry-pick" used to clean up the log message even when it is
+ merely replaying an existing commit. It now replays the message
+ verbatim unless you are editing the message of the resulting
+ commit.
* "git archive" can now be told to set the 'text' attribute in the
resulting zip archive.
+ * Output from "git log --decorate" now distinguishes between a
+ detached HEAD vs. a HEAD that points at a branch.
+
+ This is a potentially backward-incompatible change; see above for
+ more information.
+
+ * When HEAD was detached when at commit xyz and hasn't been moved
+ since it was detached, "git status" would report "detached at xyz"
+ whereas "git branch" would report "detached from xyz". Now the
+ output of "git branch" agrees with that of "git status".
+
+ This is a potentially backward-incompatible change; see above for
+ more information.
+
+ * "git -C '' subcmd" now works in the current directory (analogously
+ to "cd ''") rather than dying with an error message.
+ (merge 6a536e2 kn/git-cd-to-empty later to maint).
+
+ * The versionsort.prereleaseSuffix configuration variable can be used
+ to specify that, for example, v1.0-pre1 comes before v1.0.
+
+ * A new "push.followTags" configuration turns the "--follow-tags"
+ option on by default for the "git push" command.
+
+ * "git log --graph --no-walk A B..." is a nonsensical combination of
+ options: "--no-walk" requests discrete points in the history, while
+ "--graph" asks to draw connections between these discrete points.
+ Forbid the use of these options together.
+
+ * "git rev-list --bisect --first-parent" does not work (yet) and can
+ even cause SEGV; forbid it. "git log --bisect --first-parent" would
+ not be useful until "git bisect --first-parent" materializes, so
+ also forbid it for now.
+
Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc.
- * Implementation of N_() macro has been updated slightly to help us
+ * Slightly change the implementation of the N_() macro to help us
detect mistakes.
- * Implementation of "reflog expire" has been restructured to fit the
- reflogs better with the recently updated ref API.
+ * Restructure the implementation of "reflog expire" to fit better
+ with the recently updated reference API.
- * The transport-helper did not give transport options such as
+ * The transport-helper did not pass transport options such as
verbosity, progress, cloning, etc. to import and export based
helpers, like it did for fetch and push based helpers, robbing them
- the chance to honor the wish of the end-users better.
-
- * The tests that wanted to see that file becomes unreadable after
- running "chmod a-r file", and the tests that wanted to make sure it
- is not run as root, we used "can we write into the / directory?" as
- a cheap substitute, but on some platforms that is not a good
- heuristics. The tests and their prerequisites have been updated to
- check what they really require.
+ of the chance to honor the wish of the end-users better.
+
+ * The tests that wanted to see that a file becomes unreadable after
+ running "chmod a-r file", and the tests that wanted to make sure
+ that they are not run as root, used "can we write into the /
+ directory?" as a cheap substitute. But on some platforms that is
+ not a good heuristic. The tests and their prerequisites have been
+ updated to check what they really require.
(merge f400e51 jk/sanity later to maint).
* Various issues around "reflog expire", e.g. using --updateref when
expiring a reflog for a symbolic reference, have been corrected
and/or made saner.
- * The strbuf API was explained between the API documentation and in
- the header file. Move missing bits to strbuf.h so that programmers
- can check only one place for all necessary information.
+ * The documentation for the strbuf API had been split between the API
+ documentation and the header file. Consolidate the documentation in
+ strbuf.h.
* The error handling functions and conventions are now documented in
- the API manual.
+ the API manual (in api-error-handling.txt).
- * Optimize attribute look-up, mostly useful in "git grep" on a
+ * Optimize gitattribute look-up, mostly useful in "git grep" on a
project that does not use many attributes, by avoiding it when we
(should) know that the attributes are not defined in the first
place.
(merge 0b868f0 sb/hex-object-name-is-at-most-41-bytes-long later to maint).
(merge 5d30851 dp/remove-duplicated-header-inclusion later to maint).
- * Simplify the ref transaction API around how "the ref should be
- pointing at this object" is specified.
+ * Simplify the ref transaction API for verifying that "the ref should
+ be pointing at this object".
+
+ * Simplify the code in "git daemon" that parses out and holds
+ hostnames used in request interpolation.
+
+ * Restructure the "git push" codepath to make it easier to add new
+ configuration bits.
+
+ * The run-command interface made it easy to make a pipe for us to
+ read from a process, wait for the process to finish, and then
+ attempt to read its output. But this pattern can lead to deadlock.
+ So introduce a helper to do this correctly (i.e., first read, and
+ then wait the process to finish) and also add code to prevent such
+ abuse in the run-command helper.
+
+ * People often forget to chain the commands in their test together
+ with &&, letting a failure from an earlier command in the test go
+ unnoticed. The new GIT_TEST_CHAIN_LINT mechanism allows you to
+ catch such a mistake more easily.
Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups.
(merge a46442f jk/blame-commit-label later to maint).
* "git rerere" (invoked internally from many mergy operations) did
- not correctly signal errors when told to update the working tree
- files and failed to do so for whatever reason.
+ not correctly signal errors when it attempted to update the working
+ tree files but failed for whatever reason.
(merge 89ea903 jn/rerere-fail-on-auto-update-failure later to maint).
* Setting diff.submodule to 'log' made "git format-patch" produce
broken patches.
(merge 339de50 dk/format-patch-ignore-diff-submodule later to maint).
- * After attempting and failing a password-less authentication
- (e.g. kerberos), libcURL refuses to fall back to password based
- Basic authentication without a bit of help/encouragement.
+ * After attempting and failing a password-less authentication (e.g.,
+ Kerberos), libcURL refuses to fall back to password-based Basic
+ authentication without a bit of help/encouragement.
(merge 4dbe664 bc/http-fallback-to-password-after-krb-fails later to maint).
- * The "git push" documentation made the "--repo=<there>" option
+ * The "git push" documentation for the "--repo=<there>" option was
easily misunderstood.
(merge 57b92a7 mg/push-repo-option-doc later to maint).
- * Code to read branch name from various files in .git/ directory
- would have misbehaved if the code to write them left an empty file.
+ * Code to read a branch name from various files in the .git/
+ directory would have overrun array limits if asked to read an empty
+ file.
(merge 66ec904 jk/status-read-branch-name-fix later to maint).
- * A misspelled conditional that is always true has been fixed.
+ * Remove a superfluous conditional that is always true.
(merge 94ee8e2 jk/remote-curl-an-array-in-struct-cannot-be-null later to maint).
- * The documentation incorrectly said that C(opy) and R(ename) are the
- only ones that can be followed by the score number in the output in
- the --raw format.
+ * The "git diff --raw" documentation incorrectly implied that C(opy)
+ and R(ename) are the only statuses that can be followed by a score
+ number.
(merge ac1c2d9 jc/diff-format-doc later to maint).
* A broken pack .idx file in the receiving repository prevented the
to the "log" command.
(merge 3cab02d jc/doc-log-rev-list-options later to maint).
- * "git apply --whitespace=fix" used to under-allocate the memory when
- the fix resulted in a longer text than the original patch.
+ * "git apply --whitespace=fix" used to under-allocate memory when the
+ fix resulted in a longer text than the original patch.
(merge 407a792 jc/apply-ws-fix-expands later to maint).
* The interactive "show a list and let the user choose from it"
- interface "add -i" used showed and prompted to the user even when
- the candidate list was empty, against which the only "choice" the
- user could have made was to choose nothing.
+ interface used by "git add -i" unnecessarily prompted the user even
+ when the candidate list was empty, against which the only "choice"
+ the user could have made was to choose nothing.
(merge a9c4641 ak/add-i-empty-candidates later to maint).
- * The insn sheet "git rebase -i" creates did not fully honor
+ * The todo list created by "git rebase -i" did not fully honor
core.abbrev settings.
(merge edb72d5 ks/rebase-i-abbrev later to maint).
- * "git fetch" over a remote-helper that cannot respond to "list"
- command could not fetch from a symbolic reference e.g. HEAD.
+ * "git fetch" over a remote-helper that cannot respond to the "list"
+ command could not fetch from a symbolic reference (e.g., HEAD).
(merge 33cae54 mh/deref-symref-over-helper-transport later to maint).
* "git push --signed" gave an incorrectly worded error message when
the other side did not support the capability.
- (merge 45917f0 jc/push-cert later to maint).
- * We didn't format an integer that wouldn't fit in "int" but in
- "uintmax_t" correctly.
+ * The "git push --signed" protocol extension did not limit what the
+ "nonce" (a server-chosen string) could contain nor how long it
+ could be, which was unnecessarily lax. Limit both the length and
+ the alphabet to a reasonably small space that can still have enough
+ entropy.
+ (merge afcb6ee jc/push-cert later to maint).
+
+ * The completion script (in contrib/) clobbered the shell variable $x
+ in the global shell namespace.
+ (merge 852ff1c ma/bash-completion-leaking-x later to maint).
+
+ * We incorrectly formatted a "uintmax_t" integer that doesn't fit in
+ "int".
(merge d306f3d jk/decimal-width-for-uintmax later to maint).
- * Reading configuration from a blob object, when it ends with a lone
- CR, use to confuse the configuration parser.
+ * The configuration parser used to be confused when reading
+ configuration from a blob object that ends with a lone CR.
(merge 1d0655c jk/config-no-ungetc-eof later to maint).
* The pack bitmap support did not build with older versions of GCC.
(merge 1f985d6 ch/new-gpg-drops-rfc-1991 later to maint).
* The credential helper for Windows (in contrib/) used to mishandle
- a user name with an at-sign in it.
+ user names that contain an at-sign.
(merge 13d261e av/wincred-with-at-in-username-fix later to maint).
- * Longstanding configuration variable naming rules has been added to
- the documentation.
+ * "diff-highlight" (in contrib/) used to show byte-by-byte
+ differences, which could cause multi-byte characters to be chopped
+ in the middle. It learned to pay attention to character boundaries
+ (assuming UTF-8).
+ (merge 8d00662 jk/colors later to maint).
+
+ * Document longstanding configuration variable naming rules in
+ CodingGuidelines.
(merge 35840a3 jc/conf-var-doc later to maint).
* An earlier workaround to squelch unhelpful deprecation warnings
- from the complier on Mac OSX unnecessarily set minimum required
+ from the compiler on OS X unnecessarily set a minimum required
version of the OS, which the user might want to raise (or lower)
for other reasons.
(merge 88c03eb es/squelch-openssl-warnings-on-macosx later to maint).
"path/to/submodule".
(merge 8196e72 ps/submodule-sanitize-path-upon-add later to maint).
- * "git merge-file" did not work correctly in a subdirectory.
+ * "git merge-file" did not work correctly when invoked in a
+ subdirectory.
(merge 204a8ff ab/merge-file-prefix later to maint).
- * "git blame" died, trying to free an uninitialized piece of memory.
+ * "git blame" could die trying to free an uninitialized piece of
+ memory.
(merge e600592 es/blame-commit-info-fix later to maint).
* "git fast-import" used to crash when it could not close and
- conclude the resulting packfile cleanly.
+ finalize the resulting packfile cleanly.
(merge 5e915f3 jk/fast-import-die-nicely-fix later to maint).
- * "update-index --refresh" used to leak when an entry cannot be
- refreshed for whatever reason.
+ * "update-index --refresh" used to leak memory when an entry could
+ not be refreshed for whatever reason.
(merge bc1c2ca sb/plug-leak-in-make-cache-entry later to maint).
* The "interpolated-path" option of "git daemon" inserted any string
- client declared on the "host=" capability request without checking.
- Sanitize and limit %H and %CH to a saner and a valid DNS name.
+ the client declared on the "host=" capability request without
+ checking. Sanitize and limit %H and %CH to a saner and a valid DNS
+ name.
(merge b485373 jk/daemon-interpolate later to maint).
- * "git daemon" looked up the hostname even when "%CH" and "%IP"
- interpolations are not requested, which was unnecessary.
+ * "git daemon" unnecessarily looked up the hostname even when "%CH"
+ and "%IP" interpolations were not requested.
(merge dc8edc8 rs/daemon-interpolate later to maint).
- * Even though we officially haven't dropped Perl 5.8 support, the
- Getopt::Long package that came with it does not support "--no-"
- prefix to negate a boolean option; manually add support to help
- people with older Getopt::Long package.
+ * We relied on "--no-" prefix handling in Perl's Getopt::Long
+ package, even though that support didn't exist in Perl 5.8 (which
+ we still support). Manually add support to help people with older
+ Getopt::Long packages.
(merge f471494 km/send-email-getopt-long-workarounds later to maint).
* "git apply" was not very careful about reading from, removing,
replacement for GNU patch).
(merge e0d201b jc/apply-beyond-symlink later to maint).
- * A breakage to git-svn around v2.2 era that triggers premature
- closing of FileHandle has been corrected.
+ * Correct a breakage in git-svn, introduced around the v2.2 era, that
+ can cause FileHandles to be closed prematurely.
(merge e426311 ew/svn-maint-fixes later to maint).
- * We did not parse username followed by literal IPv6 address in SSH
- transport URLs, e.g. ssh://user@[2001:db8::1]:22/repo.git
- correctly.
- (merge 3f55cca tb/connect-ipv6-parse-fix later to maint).
+ * We did not parse usernames followed by literal IPv6 addresses
+ correctly in SSH transport URLs; e.g.,
+ ssh://user@[2001:db8::1]:22/repo.git.
+ (merge 6b6c5f7 tb/connect-ipv6-parse-fix later to maint).
* The configuration variable 'mailinfo.scissors' was hard to
discover in the documentation.
submodule.*.update configuration was not clearly documented.
(merge 5c31acf ms/submodule-update-config-doc later to maint).
- * "git diff --shortstat --dirstat=changes" showed a dirstat based on
- lines that was never asked by the end user in addition to the
- dirstat that the user asked for.
+ * "git diff --shortstat" used together with "--dirstat=changes" or
+ "--dirstat=files" incorrectly output dirstat information twice.
(merge ab27389 mk/diff-shortstat-dirstat-fix later to maint).
- * "git remote add" mentioned "--tags" and "--no-tags" and was not
- clear that fetch from the remote in the future will use the default
- behaviour when neither is given to override it.
+ * The manpage for "git remote add" mentioned "--tags" and "--no-tags"
+ but did not explain what happens if neither option is provided.
(merge aaba0ab mg/doc-remote-tags-or-not later to maint).
- * Description given by "grep -h" for its --exclude-standard option
- was phrased poorly.
+ * The description of "--exclude-standard option" in the output of
+ "git grep -h" was phrased poorly.
(merge 77fdb8a nd/grep-exclude-standard-help-fix later to maint).
- * "git rebase -i" recently started to include the number of
- commits in the insn sheet to be processed, but on a platform
- that prepends leading whitespaces to "wc -l" output, the numbers
- are shown with extra whitespaces that aren't necessary.
+ * "git rebase -i" recently started to include the number of commits
+ in the todo list, but that output included extraneous whitespace on
+ a platform that prepends leading whitespaces to its "wc -l" output.
(merge 2185d3b es/rebase-i-count-todo later to maint).
- * The borrowed code in kwset API did not follow our usual convention
- to use "unsigned char" to store values that range from 0-255.
+ * The borrowed code in the kwset API did not follow our usual
+ convention to use "unsigned char" to store values that range from
+ 0-255.
(merge 189c860 bw/kwset-use-unsigned later to maint).
* A corrupt input to "git diff -M" used to cause it to segfault.
(merge 4d6be03 jk/diffcore-rename-duplicate later to maint).
- * Code cleanups and documentaiton updates.
+ * Certain builds of GPG triggered false breakages in a test.
+ (merge 3f88c1b mg/verify-commit later to maint).
+
+ * "git imap-send" learned to optionally talk with an IMAP server via
+ libcURL. Because there is no other option when Git is built with
+ the NO_OPENSSL option, use libcURL by default in that case.
+ (merge dcd01ea km/imap-send-libcurl-options later to maint).
+
+ * "git log --decorate" did not reset colors correctly around the
+ branch names.
+ (merge 5ee8758 jc/decorate-leaky-separator-color later to maint).
+
+ * The code that reads from the ctags file in the completion script
+ (in contrib/) did not spell ${param/pattern/string} substitution
+ correctly, which happened to work with bash but not with zsh.
+ (merge db8d750 js/completion-ctags-pattern-substitution-fix later to maint).
+
+ * The transfer.hiderefs support did not quite work for smart-http
+ transport.
+ (merge 8ddf3ca jk/smart-http-hide-refs later to maint).
+
+ * In the "git tag -h" output, move the documentation for the
+ "--column" and "--sort" options to the "Tag listing options"
+ section.
+ (merge dd059c6 jk/tag-h-column-is-a-listing-option later to maint).
+
+ * "git prune" used to largely ignore broken refs when deciding which
+ objects are still being used, which could cause reference
+ corruption to lead to object loss.
+ (merge ea56c4e jk/prune-with-corrupt-refs later to maint).
+
+ * The split-index mode introduced in v2.3.0-rc0~41 was broken in the
+ codepath to protect us against a broken reimplementation of Git
+ that writes an invalid index with duplicated index entries, etc.
+ (merge 03f15a7 tg/fix-check-order-with-split-index later to maint).
+
+ * "git fetch", when fetching a commit using the
+ allow-tip-sha1-in-want extension, could have failed to fetch all of
+ the requested refs.
+ (merge 32d0462 jk/fetch-pack later to maint).
+
+ * An failure early in the "git clone" that started creating the
+ working tree and repository could have resulted in the failure to
+ clean up some directories and files.
+ (merge 16eff6c jk/cleanup-failed-clone later to maint).
+
+ * Recommend format-patch and send-email for those who want to submit
+ patches to this project.
+ (merge b25c469 jc/submitting-patches-mention-send-email later to maint).
+
+ * Do not spawn the pager when "git grep" is run with "--quiet".
+ (merge c2048f0 ws/grep-quiet-no-pager later to maint).
+
+ * The prompt script (in contrib/) did not show the untracked sign
+ when working in a subdirectory without any untracked files.
+ (merge 9bdc517 ct/prompt-untracked-fix later to maint).
+
+ * An earlier update to the URL parser broke an address that contains
+ a colon but an empty string for the port number, like
+ ssh://example.com:/path/to/repo.
+ (merge 6b6c5f7 tb/connect-ipv6-parse-fix later to maint).
+
+ * Code cleanups and documentation updates.
(merge 2ce63e9 rs/simple-cleanups later to maint).
(merge 33baa69 rj/no-xopen-source-for-cygwin later to maint).
(merge 817d03e jc/diff-test-updates later to maint).
(merge 53e53c7 sg/completion-remote later to maint).
(merge 8fa7975 ak/git-done-help-cleanup later to maint).
(merge 9a6f128 rs/deflate-init-cleanup later to maint).
+ (merge 6f75d45 rs/use-isxdigit later to maint).
+ (merge 376e4b3 jk/test-annoyances later to maint).
+ (merge 7032054 nd/doc-git-index-version later to maint).
+ (merge e869c5e tg/test-index-v4 later to maint).
+ (merge 599d223 jk/simplify-csum-file-sha1fd-check later to maint).
+ (merge 260d585 sg/completion-gitcomp-nl-for-refs later to maint).
+ (merge 777c55a jc/report-path-error-to-dir later to maint).
+ (merge fddfaf8 ph/push-doc-cas later to maint).
+ (merge d50d31e ss/pull-rebase-preserve later to maint).
+ (merge c8c3f1d pt/enter-repo-comment-fix later to maint).
+ (merge d7bfb9e jz/gitweb-conf-doc-fix later to maint).
+ (merge f907282 jk/cherry-pick-docfix later to maint).
+ (merge d3c0811 iu/fix-parse-options-h-comment later to maint).
+ (merge 6c3b2af jg/cguide-we-cannot-count later to maint).
+ (merge 2b8bd44 jk/pack-corruption-post-mortem later to maint).
+ (merge 9585cb8 jn/doc-fast-import-no-16-octopus-limit later to maint).
+ (merge 5dcd1b1 ps/grep-help-all-callback-arg later to maint).
+ (merge f1f4c84 va/fix-git-p4-tests later to maint).