Git 2.11 Release Notes
======================
+Backward compatibility notes.
+
+ * An empty string used as a pathspec element has always meant
+ 'everything matches', but it is too easy to write a script that
+ finds a path to remove in $path and run 'git rm "$paht"' by
+ mistake (when the user meant to give "$path"), which ends up
+ removing everything. This release starts warning about the
+ use of an empty string that is used for 'everything matches' and
+ asks users to use a more explicit '.' for that instead.
+
+ The hope is that existing users will not mind this change, and
+ eventually the warning can be turned into a hard error, upgrading
+ the deprecation into removal of this (mis)feature.
+
+ * The historical argument order "git merge <msg> HEAD <commit>..."
+ has been deprecated for quite some time, and will be removed in the
+ next release (not this one).
+
+ * The default abbreviation length, which has historically been 7, now
+ scales as the repository grows, using the approximate number of
+ objects in the repository and a bit of math around the birthday
+ paradox. The logic suggests to use 12 hexdigits for the Linux
+ kernel, and 9 to 10 for Git itself.
+
+
Updates since v2.10
-------------------
UI, Workflows & Features
+ * Comes with new version of git-gui, now at its 0.21.0 tag.
+
* "git format-patch --cover-letter HEAD^" to format a single patch
with a separate cover letter now numbers the output as [PATCH 0/1]
and [PATCH 1/1] by default.
which was not intuitive, given that "git nosuchcommand" said "git:
'nosuchcommand' is not a git command".
- * "git clone --resurse-submodules --reference $path $URL" is a way to
+ * "git clone --recurse-submodules --reference $path $URL" is a way to
reduce network transfer cost by borrowing objects in an existing
$path repository when cloning the superproject from $URL; it
- learned to also peek into $path for presense of corresponding
+ learned to also peek into $path for presence of corresponding
repositories of submodules and borrow objects from there when able.
* The "git diff --submodule={short,log}" mechanism has been enhanced
* In some projects, it is common to use "[RFC PATCH]" as the subject
prefix for a patch meant for discussion rather than application. A
- new option "--rfc" was a short-hand for "--subject-prefix=RFC PATCH"
+ new option "--rfc" is a short-hand for "--subject-prefix=RFC PATCH"
to help the participants of such projects.
* "git add --chmod=+x <pathspec>" added recently only toggled the
* When given an abbreviated object name that is not (or more
realistically, "no longer") unique, we gave a fatal error
- "ambiguous argument". This error is now accompanied by hints that
- lists the objects that begins with the given prefix. During the
+ "ambiguous argument". This error is now accompanied by a hint that
+ lists the objects beginning with the given prefix. During the
course of development of this new feature, numerous minor bugs were
uncovered and corrected, the most notable one of which is that we
gave "short SHA1 xxxx is ambiguous." twice without good reason.
* "git mergetool" learned to honor "-O<orderfile>" to control the
order of paths to present to the end user.
+ * "git diff/log --ws-error-highlight=<kind>" lacked the corresponding
+ configuration variable to set it by default.
+
+ * "git ls-files" learned "--recurse-submodules" option that can be
+ used to get a listing of tracked files across submodules (i.e. this
+ only works with "--cached" option, not for listing untracked or
+ ignored files). This would be a useful tool to sit on the upstream
+ side of a pipe that is read with xargs to work on all working tree
+ files from the top-level superproject.
+
+ * A new credential helper that talks via "libsecret" with
+ implementations of XDG Secret Service API has been added to
+ contrib/credential/.
+
+ * The GPG verification status shown in "%G?" pretty format specifier
+ was not rich enough to differentiate a signature made by an expired
+ key, a signature made by a revoked key, etc. New output letters
+ have been assigned to express them.
+
+ * In addition to purely abbreviated commit object names, "gitweb"
+ learned to turn "git describe" output (e.g. v2.9.3-599-g2376d31787)
+ into clickable links in its output.
+
+ * When new paths were added by "git add -N" to the index, it was
+ enough to circumvent the check by "git commit" to refrain from
+ making an empty commit without "--allow-empty". The same logic
+ prevented "git status" to show such a path as "new file" in the
+ "Changes not staged for commit" section.
+
+ * The smudge/clean filter API expect an external process is spawned
+ to filter the contents for each path that has a filter defined. A
+ new type of "process" filter API has been added to allow the first
+ request to run the filter for a path to spawn a single process, and
+ all filtering need is served by this single process for multiple
+ paths, reducing the process creation overhead.
+
+ * The user always has to say "stash@{$N}" when naming a single
+ element in the default location of the stash, i.e. reflogs in
+ refs/stash. The "git stash" command learned to accept "git stash
+ apply 4" as a short-hand for "git stash apply stash@{4}".
+
Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc.
decide if we accept the check, and once we decide, either migrate
them to the repository or purge them immediately.
+ * The require_clean_work_tree() helper was recreated in C when "git
+ pull" was rewritten from shell; the helper is now made available to
+ other callers in preparation for upcoming "rebase -i" work.
+
+ * "git upload-pack" had its code cleaned-up and performance improved
+ by reducing use of timestamp-ordered commit-list, which was
+ replaced with a priority queue.
+
+ * "git diff --no-index" codepath has been updated not to try to peek
+ into .git/ directory that happens to be under the current
+ directory, when we know we are operating outside any repository.
+
+ * Update of the sequencer codebase to make it reusable to reimplement
+ "rebase -i" continues.
+
+ * Git generally does not explicitly close file descriptors that were
+ open in the parent process when spawning a child process, but most
+ of the time the child does not want to access them. As Windows does
+ not allow removing or renaming a file that has a file descriptor
+ open, a slow-to-exit child can even break the parent process by
+ holding onto them. Use O_CLOEXEC flag to open files in various
+ codepaths.
+
+ * Update "interpret-trailers" machinery and teaches it that people in
+ real world write all sorts of crufts in the "trailer" that was
+ originally designed to have the neat-o "Mail-Header: like thing"
+ and nothing else.
+
Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups.
* "git diff -W" output needs to extend the context backward to
include the header line of the current function and also forward to
include the body of the entire current function up to the header
- line of the next one. This process may have to merge to adjacent
+ line of the next one. This process may have to merge two adjacent
hunks, but the code forgot to do so in some cases.
* Performance tests done via "t/perf" did not use the same set of
* The pretty-format specifier "%C(auto)" used by the "log" family of
commands to enable coloring of the output is taught to also issue a
color-reset sequence to the output.
- (merge 82b83da8d3 rs/c-auto-resets-attributes later to maint).
* A shell script example in check-ref-format documentation has been
fixed.
beyond the end of the mapped region. This was fixed by introducing
a regexec_buf() helper that takes a <ptr,len> pair with REG_STARTEND
extension.
- (merge 842a516cb0 js/regexec-buf later to maint).
* The procedure to build Git on Mac OS X for Travis CI hardcoded the
internal directory structure we assumed HomeBrew uses, which was a
mechanism to avoid digging too deep into irrelevant side branches.
This however did not work well over the "smart-http" transport due
to a design bug, which has been fixed.
- (merge 06b3d386e0 jt/fetch-pack-in-vain-count-with-stateless later to maint).
* In the codepath that comes up with the hostname to be used in an
e-mail when the user didn't tell us, we looked at ai_canonname
version of cURL library is available, we forgot to explicitly add
imap(s):// before the destination. To some folks, that didn't work
and the library tried to make HTTP(s) requests instead.
- (merge d2d07ab861 ak/curl-imap-send-explicit-scheme later to maint).
* The ./configure script generated from configure.ac was taught how
to detect support of SSL by libcurl better.
- (merge 924b7eb1c9 dp/autoconf-curl-ssl later to maint).
* The command-line completion script (in contrib/) learned to
complete "git cmd ^mas<HT>" to complete the negative end of
Kerberos. We took an unspecified (NULL) username and sent ":"
(i.e. no username, no password) to CURLOPT_USERPWD, but did not do
the same when the username is explicitly set to an empty string.
- (merge 5275c3081c dt/http-empty-auth later to maint).
* "git clone" of a local repository can be done at the filesystem
level, but the codepath did not check errors while copying and
adjusting the file that lists alternate object stores.
- (merge 22d3b8de1b jk/clone-copy-alternates-fix later to maint).
* Documentation for "git commit" was updated to clarify that "commit
-p <paths>" adds to the current contents of the index to come up
with what to commit.
- (merge 7431596ab1 nd/commit-p-doc later to maint).
* A stray symbolic link in $GIT_DIR/refs/ directory could make name
resolution loop forever, which has been corrected.
- (merge e8c42cb9ce jk/ref-symlink-loop later to maint).
* The "submodule.<name>.path" stored in .gitmodules is never copied
to .git/config and such a key in .git/config has no meaning, but
the documentation described it and submodule.<name>.url next to
each other as if both belong to .git/config. This has been fixed.
- (merge 72710165c9 sb/submodule-config-doc-drop-path later to maint).
+
+ * In a worktree connected to a repository elsewhere, created via "git
+ worktree", "git checkout" attempts to protect users from confusion
+ by refusing to check out a branch that is already checked out in
+ another worktree. However, this also prevented checking out a
+ branch, which is designated as the primary branch of a bare
+ reopsitory, in a worktree that is connected to the bare
+ repository. The check has been corrected to allow it.
+
+ * "git rebase" immediately after "git clone" failed to find the fork
+ point from the upstream.
+
+ * When fetching from a remote that has many tags that are irrelevant
+ to branches we are following, we used to waste way too many cycles
+ when checking if the object pointed at by a tag (that we are not
+ going to fetch!) exists in our repository too carefully.
+
+ * Protect our code from over-eager compilers.
+
+ * Recent git allows submodule.<name>.branch to use a special token
+ "." instead of the branch name; the documentation has been updated
+ to describe it.
+
+ * A hot-fix for a test added by a recent topic that went to both
+ 'master' and 'maint' already.
+
+ * "git send-email" attempts to pick up valid e-mails from the
+ trailers, but people in real world write non-addresses there, like
+ "Cc: Stable <add@re.ss> # 4.8+", which broke the output depending
+ on the availability and vintage of Mail::Address perl module.
+ (merge dcfafc5214 mm/send-email-cc-cruft-after-address later to maint).
+
+ * The Travis CI configuration we ship ran the tests with --verbose
+ option but this risks non-TAP output that happens to be "ok" to be
+ misinterpreted as TAP signalling a test that passed. This resulted
+ in unnecessary failure. This has been corrected by introducing a
+ new mode to run our tests in the test harness to send the verbose
+ output separately to the log file.
+
+ * Some AsciiDoc formatter mishandles a displayed illustration with
+ tabs in it. Adjust a few of them in merge-base documentation to
+ work around them.
+
+ * A minor regression fix for "git submodule" that was introduced
+ when more helper functions were reimplemented in C.
+ (merge 77b63ac31e sb/submodule-ignore-trailing-slash later to maint).
+
+ * The code that we have used for the past 10+ years to cycle
+ 4-element ring buffers turns out to be not quite portable in
+ theoretical world.
+ (merge bb84735c80 rs/ring-buffer-wraparound later to maint).
+
+ * "git daemon" used fixed-length buffers to turn URL to the
+ repository the client asked for into the server side directory
+ path, using snprintf() to avoid overflowing these buffers, but
+ allowed possibly truncated paths to the directory. This has been
+ tightened to reject such a request that causes overlong path to be
+ required to serve.
+ (merge 6bdb0083be jk/daemon-path-ok-check-truncation later to maint).
+
+ * Recent update to git-sh-setup (a library of shell functions that
+ are used by our in-tree scripted Porcelain commands) included
+ another shell library git-sh-i18n without specifying where it is,
+ relying on the $PATH. This has been fixed to be more explicit by
+ prefixing $(git --exec-path) output in front.
+ (merge 1073094f30 ak/sh-setup-dot-source-i18n-fix later to maint).
* Other minor doc, test and build updates and code cleanups.
- (merge a94bb68397 rs/cocci later to maint).
- (merge 641c900b2c js/reset-usage later to maint).
- (merge 30cfe72d37 rs/pretty-format-color-doc-fix later to maint).
+ (merge 5c238e29a8 jk/common-main later to maint).
+ (merge 5a5749e45b ak/pre-receive-hook-template-modefix later to maint).
+ (merge 6d834ac8f1 jk/rebase-config-insn-fmt-docfix later to maint).
+ (merge de9f7fa3b0 rs/commit-pptr-simplify later to maint).
+ (merge 4259d693fc sc/fmt-merge-msg-doc-markup-fix later to maint).
+ (merge 28fab7b23d nd/test-helpers later to maint).
+ (merge c2bb0c1d1e rs/cocci later to maint).