Updates since v1.8.3
--------------------
-Foreign interface
+Foreign interfaces and ports.
+
+ * Update build for Cygwin 1.[57]. Torsten Bögershausen reports that
+ this is fine with Cygwin 1.7 ($gmane/225824) so let's try moving it
+ ahead.
+
+ * The credential helper to talk to keychain on OS X (in contrib/) has
+ been updated to kick in not just when talking http/https but also
+ imap(s) and smtp.
* Remote transport helper has been updated to report errors and
maintain ref hierarchy used to keep track of its own state better.
+ * With "export" remote-helper protocol, (1) a push that tries to
+ update a remote ref whose name is different from the pushing side
+ does not work yet, and (2) the helper may not know how to do
+ --dry-run; these problematic cases are disabled for now.
+
+ * git-remote-hg/bzr (in contrib/) updates.
+
+ * git-remote-mw (in contrib/) hints users to check the certificate,
+ when https:// connection failed.
+
UI, Workflows & Features
+ * "git cmd <name>", when <name> happens to be a 40-hex string,
+ directly uses the 40-hex string as an object name, even if a ref
+ "refs/<some hierarchy>/<name>" exists. This disambiguation order
+ is unlikely to change, but we should warn about the ambiguity just
+ like we warn when more than one refs/ hierachies share the same
+ name.
+
+ * "git rebase" learned "--[no-]autostash" option to save local
+ changes instead of refusing to run (to which people's normal
+ response was to stash them and re-run).
+
+ * Instead of typing four capital letters "HEAD", you can say "@" now,
+ e.g. "git log @".
+
* "check-ignore" (new feature since 1.8.2) has been updated to work
more like "check-attr" over bidi-pipes.
* "git describe" learned "--first-parent" option to limit its closest
- tagged commmit search to the first-parent chain.
+ tagged commit search to the first-parent chain.
* "git merge foo" that might have meant "git merge origin/foo" is
diagnosed with a more informative error message.
* Updates to completion (both bash and zsh) helpers.
+ * The behaviour of the "--chain-reply-to" option of "git send-email"
+ have changed at 1.7.0, and we added a warning/advice message to
+ help users adjust to the new behaviour back then, but we kept it
+ around for too long. The message has finally been removed.
+
* "git fetch origin master" unlike "git fetch origin" or "git fetch"
did not update "refs/remotes/origin/master"; this was an early
design decision to keep the update of remote tracking branches
predictable, but in practice it turns out that people find it more
- convenient to opportunisticly update them whenever we have a
+ convenient to opportunistically update them whenever we have a
chance, and we have been updating them when we run "git push" which
already breaks the original "predictability" anyway.
+ * The configuration variable core.checkstat was advertised in the
+ documentation but the code expected core.statinfo instead.
+ For now, we accept both core.checkstat and core.statinfo, but the
+ latter will be removed in the longer term.
+
Performance, Internal Implementation, etc.
+ * Some leaks in unpack-trees (used in merge, cherry-pick and other
+ codepaths) have been plugged.
+
* The codepath to read from marks files in fast-import/export did not
have to accept anything but 40-hex representation of the object
name. Further, fast-export did not need full in-core object
inconsistently between the test framework and t/Makefile, and logic
to summarize the results looked at a wrong place.
+ * "git clone" uses a lighter-weight implementation when making sure
+ that the history behind refs are complete.
+
* Many warnings from sparse source checker in compat/ area has been
squelched.
track are contained in this release (see release notes to them for
details).
+ * "gitweb" forgot to clear a global variable $search_regexp upon each
+ request, mistakenly carrying over the previous search to a new one
+ when used as a persistent CGI.
+ (merge ca7a5dc cm/gitweb-project-list-persistent-cgi-fix later to maint).
+
+ * The wildmatch engine did not honor WM_CASEFOLD option correctly.
+ (merge b79c0c3 ar/wildmatch-foldcase later to maint).
+
+ * "git log -c --follow $path" segfaulted upon hitting the commit that
+ renamed the $path being followed.
+ (merge 46ec510 cb/log-follow-with-combined later to maint).
+
+ * When a reflog notation is used for implicit "current branch", we
+ did not say which branch and worse said "branch ''".
+ (merge 305ebea rr/die-on-missing-upstream later to maint).
+
+ * "difftool --dir-diff" did not copy back changes made by the
+ end-user in the diff tool backend to the working tree in some
+ cases.
+ (merge 32eaf1d ks/difftool-dir-diff-copy-fix later to maint).
+
+ * "git push $there HEAD:branch" did not resolve HEAD early enough, so
+ it was easy to flip it around while push is still going on and push
+ out a branch that the user did not originally intended when the
+ command was started.
+ (merge 0f075b2 rr/push-head later to maint).
+
+ * The bash prompt code (in contrib/) displayed the name of the branch
+ being rebased when "rebase -i/-m/-p" modes are in use, but not the
+ plain vanilla "rebase".
+ (merge 1306321 fc/show-branch-in-rebase-am later to maint).
+
+ * Handling of negative exclude pattern for directories "!dir" was
+ broken in the update to v1.8.3.
+ (merge c3c327d kb/status-ignored-optim-2 later to maint).
+
+ * zsh prompt script that borrowed from bash prompt script did not
+ work due to slight differences in array variable notation between
+ these two shells.
+ (merge d0583da tg/maint-zsh-svn-remote-prompt later to maint).
+
+ * An entry for "file://" scheme in the enumeration of URL types Git
+ can take in the HTML documentation was made into a clickable link
+ by mistake.
+ (merge 4c32e36 nd/urls-doc-no-file-hyperlink-fix later to maint).
+
+ * "git push --[no-]verify" was not documented.
+ (merge 90d32d1 tr/push-no-verify-doc later to maint).
+
+ * Stop installing the git-remote-testpy script that is only used for
+ testing.
+ (merge 416fda6 fc/makefile later to maint).
+
+ * "git commit --allow-empty-message -m ''" should not start an
+ editor.
+ (merge 2520677 rs/commit-m-no-edit later to maint).
+
* "git merge @{-1}~22" was rewritten to "git merge frotz@{1}~22"
incorrectly when your previous branch was "frotz" (it should be
rewritten to "git merge frotz~22" instead).