GIT v1.5.4 Release Notes
========================
+Removal
+-------
+
+ * "git svnimport" was removed in favor of "git svn". It is still there
+ in the source tree (contrib/examples) but unsupported.
+
+ * As git-commit and git-status have been rewritten, "git runstatus"
+ helper script lost all its users and has been removed.
+
+
+Temporarily disabled
+--------------------
+
+ * "git http-push" is known not to work well with cURL library older
+ than 7.16, and we had reports of repository corruption. It is
+ disabled on such platforms for now. Unfortunately, 1.5.3.8 shares
+ the same issue. In other words, this does not mean you will be
+ fine if you stick to an older git release. For now, please do not
+ use http-push from older git with cURL older than 7.16 if you
+ value your data. A proper fix will hopefully materialize in
+ later versions.
+
+
+Deprecation notices
+-------------------
+
+ * From v1.6.0, git will by default install dashed form of commands
+ (e.g. "git-commit") outside of users' normal $PATH, and will install
+ only selected commands ("git" itself, and "gitk") in $PATH. This
+ implies:
+
+ - Using dashed forms of git commands (e.g. "git-commit") from the
+ command line has been informally deprecated since early 2006, but
+ now it officially is, and will be removed in the future. Use
+ dash-less forms (e.g. "git commit") instead.
+
+ - Using dashed forms from your scripts, without first prepending the
+ return value from "git --exec-path" to the scripts' PATH, has been
+ informally deprecated since early 2006, but now it officially is.
+
+ - Use of dashed forms with "PATH=$(git --exec-path):$PATH; export
+ PATH" early in your script is not deprecated with this change.
+
+ Users are strongly encouraged to adjust their habits and scripts now
+ to prepare for this change.
+
+ * The post-receive hook was introduced in March 2007 to supersede
+ the post-update hook, primarily to overcome the command line length
+ limitation of the latter. Use of post-update hook will be deprecated
+ in future versions of git, starting from v1.6.0.
+
+ * "git lost-found" was deprecated in favor of "git fsck"'s --lost-found
+ option, and will be removed in the future.
+
+ * "git peek-remote" is deprecated, as "git ls-remote" was written in C
+ and works for all transports; "git peek-remote" will be removed in
+ the future.
+
+ * "git repo-config" which was an old name for "git config" command
+ has been supported without being advertised for a long time. The
+ next feature release will remove it.
+
+ * From v1.6.0, the repack.usedeltabaseoffset config option will default
+ to true, which will give denser packfiles (i.e. more efficient storage).
+ The downside is that git older than version 1.4.4 will not be able
+ to directly use a repository packed using this setting.
+
+ * From v1.6.0, the pack.indexversion config option will default to 2,
+ which is slightly more efficient, and makes repacking more immune to
+ data corruptions. Git older than version 1.5.2 may revert to version 1
+ of the pack index with a manual "git index-pack" to be able to directly
+ access corresponding pack files.
+
+
Updates since v1.5.3
--------------------
+ * Comes with much improved gitk, with i18n.
+
+ * Comes with git-gui 0.9.2 with i18n.
+
+ * gitk is now merged as a subdirectory of git.git project, in
+ preparation for its i18n.
+
+ * progress displays from many commands are a lot nicer to the eye.
+ Transfer commands show throughput data.
+
+ * many commands that pay attention to per-directory .gitignore now do
+ so lazily, which makes the usual case go much faster.
+
+ * Output processing for '--pretty=format:<user format>' has been
+ optimized.
+
+ * Rename detection of diff family while detecting exact matches has
+ been greatly optimized.
+
+ * Rename detection of diff family tries to make more natural looking
+ pairing. Earlier, if multiple identical rename sources were
+ found in the preimage, the source used was picked pretty much at random.
+
+ * Value "true" for color.diff and color.status configuration used to
+ mean "always" (even when the output is not going to a terminal).
+ This has been corrected to mean the same thing as "auto".
+
+ * "git diff" Porcelain now respects diff.external configuration, which
+ is another way to specify GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF.
+
+ * "git diff" can be told to use different prefixes other than
+ "a/" and "b/" e.g. "git diff --src-prefix=l/ --dst-prefix=k/".
+
+ * "git diff" sometimes did not quote paths with funny
+ characters properly.
+
+ * "git log" (and any revision traversal commands) misbehaved
+ when --diff-filter is given but was not asked to actually
+ produce diff.
+
+ * HTTP proxy can be specified per remote repository using
+ remote.*.httpproxy configuration, or global http.proxy configuration
+ variable.
+
+ * Various Perforce importer updates.
+
+ * Example update and post-receive hooks have been improved.
+
+ * Any command that wants to take a commit object name can now use
+ ":/string" syntax to name a commit.
+
+ * "git reset" is now built-in and its output can be squelched with -q.
+
+ * "git reset --hard" does not make any sense in a bare
+ repository, but did not error out; fixed.
+
+ * "git send-email" can optionally talk over ssmtp and use SMTP-AUTH.
+
+ * "git rebase" learned --whitespace option.
+
+ * In "git rebase", when you decide not to replay a particular change
+ after the command stopped with a conflict, you can say "git rebase
+ --skip" without first running "git reset --hard", as the command now
+ runs it for you.
+
+ * "git rebase --interactive" mode can now work on detached HEAD.
+
+ * Other minor to serious bugs in "git rebase -i" have been fixed.
+
+ * "git rebase" now detaches head during its operation, so after a
+ successful "git rebase" operation, the reflog entry branch@{1} for
+ the current branch points at the commit before the rebase was
+ started.
+
+ * "git rebase -i" also triggers rerere to help your repeated merges.
+
+ * "git merge" can call the "post-merge" hook.
+
+ * "git pack-objects" can optionally run deltification with multiple
+ threads.
+
+ * "git archive" can optionally substitute keywords in files marked with
+ export-subst attribute.
+
+ * "git cherry-pick" made a misguided attempt to repeat the original
+ command line in the generated log message, when told to cherry-pick a
+ commit by naming a tag that points at it. It does not anymore.
+
+ * "git for-each-ref" learned %(xxxdate:<date-format>) syntax to show the
+ various date fields in different formats.
+
+ * "git gc --auto" is a low-impact way to automatically run a variant of
+ "git repack" that does not lose unreferenced objects (read: safer
+ than the usual one) after the user accumulates too many loose
+ objects.
+
+ * "git clean" has been rewritten in C.
+
+ * You need to explicitly set clean.requireForce to "false" to allow
+ "git clean" without -f to do any damage (lack of the configuration
+ variable used to mean "do not require -f option to lose untracked
+ files", but we now use the safer default).
+
+ * The kinds of whitespace errors "git diff" and "git apply" notice (and
+ fix) can be controlled via 'core.whitespace' configuration variable
+ and 'whitespace' attribute in .gitattributes file.
+
+ * "git push" learned --dry-run option to show what would happen if a
+ push is run.
+ * "git push" does not update a tracking ref on the local side when the
+ remote refused to update the corresponding ref.
+
+ * "git push" learned --mirror option. This is to push the local refs
+ one-to-one to the remote, and deletes refs from the remote that do
+ not exist anymore in the repository on the pushing side.
+
+ * "git push" can remove a corrupt ref at the remote site with the usual
+ ":ref" refspec.
+
+ * "git remote" knows --mirror mode. This is to set up configuration to
+ push into a remote repository to store local branch heads to the same
+ branch on the remote side, and remove branch heads locally removed
+ from local repository at the same time. Suitable for pushing into a
+ back-up repository.
+
+ * "git remote" learned "rm" subcommand.
+
+ * "git cvsserver" can be run via "git shell". Also, "cvs" is
+ recognized as a synonym for "git cvsserver", so that CVS users
+ can be switched to git just by changing their login shell.
+
+ * "git cvsserver" acts more like receive-pack by running post-receive
+ and post-update hooks.
+
+ * "git am" and "git rebase" are far less verbose.
+
+ * "git pull" learned to pass --[no-]ff option to underlying "git
+ merge".
+
+ * "git pull --rebase" is a different way to integrate what you fetched
+ into your current branch.
+
+ * "git fast-export" produces data-stream that can be fed to fast-import
+ to reproduce the history recorded in a git repository.
+
+ * "git add -i" takes pathspecs to limit the set of files to work on.
+
+ * "git add -p" is a short-hand to go directly to the selective patch
+ subcommand in the interactive command loop and to exit when done.
+
+ * "git add -i" UI has been colorized. The interactive prompt
+ and menu can be colored by setting color.interactive
+ configuration. The diff output (including the hunk picker)
+ are colored with color.diff configuration.
+
+ * "git commit --allow-empty" allows you to create a single-parent
+ commit that records the same tree as its parent, overriding the usual
+ safety valve.
+
+ * "git commit --amend" can amend a merge that does not change the tree
+ from its first parent.
+
+ * "git commit" used to unconditionally strip comment lines that
+ began with '#' and removed excess blank lines. This behavior has
+ been made configurable.
+
+ * "git commit" has been rewritten in C.
+
+ * "git stash random-text" does not create a new stash anymore. It was
+ a UI mistake. Use "git stash save random-text", or "git stash"
+ (without extra args) for that.
+
+ * "git stash clear extra-text" does not clear the whole stash
+ anymore. It is tempting to expect "git stash clear stash@{2}"
+ to drop only a single named stash entry, and it is rude to
+ discard everything when that is asked (but not provided).
+
+ * "git prune --expire <time>" can exempt young loose objects from
+ getting pruned.
+
+ * "git branch --contains <commit>" can list branches that are
+ descendants of a given commit.
+
+ * "git log" learned --early-output option to help interactive GUI
+ implementations.
+
+ * "git bisect" learned "skip" action to mark untestable commits.
+
+ * "git bisect visualize" learned a shorter synonym "git bisect view".
+
+ * "git bisect visualize" runs "git log" in a non-windowed
+ environments. It also can be told what command to run (e.g. "git
+ bisect visualize tig").
+
+ * "git format-patch" learned "format.numbered" configuration variable
+ to automatically turn --numbered option on when more than one commits
+ are formatted.
+
+ * "git ls-files" learned "--exclude-standard" to use the canned set of
+ exclude files.
+
+ * "git tag -a -f existing" begins the editor session using the existing
+ annotation message.
+
+ * "git tag -m one -m bar" (multiple -m options) behaves similarly to
+ "git commit"; the parameters to -m options are formatted as separate
+ paragraphs.
+
+ * The format "git show" outputs an annotated tag has been updated to
+ include "Tagger: " and "Date: " lines from the tag itself. Strictly
+ speaking this is a backward incompatible change, but this is a
+ reasonable usability fix and people's scripts shouldn't have been
+ relying on the exact output from "git show" Porcelain anyway.
+
+ * "git cvsimport" did not notice errors from underlying "cvsps"
+ and produced a corrupt import silently.
+
+ * "git cvsexportcommit" learned -w option to specify and switch to the
+ CVS working directory.
+
+ * "git checkout" from a subdirectory learned to use "../path" to allow
+ checking out a path outside the current directory without cd'ing up.
+
+ * "git checkout" from and to detached HEAD leaves a bit more
+ information in the reflog.
+
+ * "git send-email --dry-run" shows full headers for easier diagnosis.
+
+ * "git merge-ours" is now built-in.
+
+ * "git svn" learned "info" and "show-externals" subcommands.
+
+ * "git svn" run from a subdirectory failed to read settings from the
+ .git/config.
+
+ * "git svn" learned --use-log-author option, which picks up more
+ descriptive name from From: and Signed-off-by: lines in the commit
+ message.
+
+ * "git svn" wasted way too much disk to record revision mappings
+ between svn and git; a new representation that is much more compact
+ for this information has been introduced to correct this.
+
+ * "git svn" left temporary index files it used without cleaning them
+ up; this was corrected.
+
+ * "git status" from a subdirectory now shows relative paths, which
+ makes copy-and-pasting for git-checkout/git-add/git-rm easier. The
+ traditional behavior to show the full path relative to the top of
+ the work tree can be had by setting status.relativepaths
+ configuration variable to false.
+
+ * "git blame" kept text for each annotated revision in core needlessly;
+ this has been corrected.
+
+ * "git shortlog" learned to default to HEAD when the standard input is
+ a terminal and the user did not give any revision parameter.
+
+ * "git shortlog" learned "-e" option to show e-mail addresses as well as
+ authors' names.
+
+ * "git help" learned "-w" option to show documentation in browsers.
+
+ * In addition there are quite a few internal clean-ups. Notably:
+
+ - many fork/exec have been replaced with run-command API,
+ brought from the msysgit effort.
+
+ - introduction and more use of the option parser API.
+
+ - enhancement and more use of the strbuf API.
+
+ * Makefile tweaks to support HP-UX is in.
Fixes since v1.5.3
------------------
All of the fixes in v1.5.3 maintenance series are included in
this release, unless otherwise noted.
+These fixes are only in v1.5.4 and not backported to v1.5.3 maintenance
+series.
+
+ * The way "git diff --check" behaves is much more consistent with the way
+ "git apply --whitespace=warn" works.
+
+ * "git svn" talking with the SVN over HTTP will correctly quote branch
+ and project names.
+
+ * "git config" did not work correctly on platforms that define
+ REG_NOMATCH to an even number.
+
+ * Recent versions of AsciiDoc 8 has a change to break our
+ documentation; a workaround has been implemented.
+
+ * "git diff --color-words" colored context lines in a wrong color.