Git v1.8.4 Release Notes
========================
+Backward compatibility notes (for Git 2.0)
+------------------------------------------
+
+When "git push [$there]" does not say what to push, we have used the
+traditional "matching" semantics so far (all your branches were sent
+to the remote as long as there already are branches of the same name
+over there). In Git 2.0, the default will change to the "simple"
+semantics that pushes:
+
+ - only the current branch to the branch with the same name, and only
+ when the current branch is set to integrate with that remote
+ branch, if you are pushing to the same remote as you fetch from; or
+
+ - only the current branch to the branch with the same name, if you
+ are pushing to a remote that is not where you usually fetch from.
+
+Use the user preference configuration variable "push.default" to
+change this. If you are an old-timer who is used to the "matching"
+semantics, you can set the variable to "matching" to keep the
+traditional behaviour. If you want to live in the future early, you
+can set it to "simple" today without waiting for Git 2.0.
+
+When "git add -u" (and "git add -A") is run inside a subdirectory and
+does not specify which paths to add on the command line, it
+will operate on the entire tree in Git 2.0 for consistency
+with "git commit -a" and other commands. There will be no
+mechanism to make plain "git add -u" behave like "git add -u .".
+Current users of "git add -u" (without a pathspec) should start
+training their fingers to explicitly say "git add -u ."
+before Git 2.0 comes. A warning is issued when these commands are
+run without a pathspec and when you have local changes outside the
+current directory, because the behaviour in Git 2.0 will be different
+from today's version in such a situation.
+
+In Git 2.0, "git add <path>" will behave as "git add -A <path>", so
+that "git add dir/" will notice paths you removed from the directory
+and record the removal. Versions before Git 2.0, including this
+release, will keep ignoring removals, but the users who rely on this
+behaviour are encouraged to start using "git add --ignore-removal <path>"
+now before 2.0 is released.
+
+
Updates since v1.8.3
--------------------
Foreign interfaces, subsystems and ports.
+ * Cygwin port has been updated for more recent Cygwin 1.7.
+
+ * "git rebase -i" now honors --strategy and -X options.
+
* Git-gui has been updated to its 0.18.0 version.
* MediaWiki remote helper (in contrib/) has been updated to use the
* git-remote-mw (in contrib/) hints users to check the certificate,
when https:// connection failed.
+ * git-remote-mw (in contrib/) adds a command to allow previewing the
+ contents locally before pushing it out, when working with a
+ MediaWiki remote.
+
UI, Workflows & Features
+ * Sample "post-receive-email" hook script got an enhanced replacement
+ "multimail" (in contrib/).
+
+ * Also in contrib/ is a new "contacts" script that runs "git blame"
+ to find out the people who may be interested in a set of changes.
+
+ * "git clean" command learned an interactive mode.
+
+ * The "--head" option to "git show-ref" was only to add "HEAD" to the
+ list of candidate refs to be filtered by the usual rules
+ (e.g. "--heads" that only show refs under refs/heads). The meaning
+ of the option has been changed to always show "HEAD" regardless of
+ what filtering will be applied to any other ref.
+
+ This is a backward incompatible change and might cause breakages to
+ people's existing scripts.
+
+ * "git show -s" was less discoverable than it should have been. It
+ now has a natural synonym "git show --no-patch".
+
+ * "git check-mailmap" is a new command that lets you map usernames
+ and e-mail addresses through the mailmap mechanism, just like many
+ built-in commands do.
+
+ * "git name-rev" learned to name an annotated tag object back to its
+ tagname; "git name-rev $(git rev-parse v1.0.0)" gives "tags/v1.0.0",
+ for example.
+
+ * "git cat-file --batch-check=<format>" is added, primarily to allow
+ on-disk footprint of objects in packfiles (often they are a lot
+ smaller than their true size, when expressed as deltas) to be
+ reported.
+
+ * "git rebase [-i]" used to leave just "rebase" as its reflog messages
+ for some operations. They have been reworded to be more informative.
+
+ * In addition to the choice from "rebase, merge, or checkout-detach",
+ "submodule update" can allow a custom command to be used in to
+ update the working tree of submodules via the "submodule.*.update"
+ configuration variable.
+
+ * "git submodule update" can optionally clone the submodule
+ repositories shallowly.
+
+ * "git format-patch" learned "--from[=whom]" option, which sets the
+ "From: " header to the specified person (or the person who runs the
+ command, if "=whom" part is missing) and move the original author
+ information to an in-body From: header as necessary.
+
+ * The configuration variable "merge.ff" was cleary a tri-state to
+ choose one from "favor fast-forward when possible", "always create
+ a merge even when the history could fast-forward" and "do not
+ create any merge, only update when the history fast-forwards", but
+ the command line parser did not implement the usual convention of
+ "last one wins, and command line overrides the configuration"
+ correctly.
+
+ * "gitweb" learned to optionally place extra links that point at the
+ levels higher than the Gitweb pages themselves in the breadcrumbs,
+ so that it can be used as part of a larger installation.
+
+ * "git log --format=" now honors i18n.logoutputencoding configuration
+ variable.
+
+ * The "push.default=simple" mode of "git push" has been updated to
+ behave like "current" without requiring a remote tracking
+ information, when you push to a remote that is different from where
+ you fetch from (i.e. a triangular workflow).
+
+ * Having multiple "fixup!" on a line in the rebase instruction sheet
+ did not work very well with "git rebase -i --autosquash".
+
+ * "git log" learned the "--author-date-order" option, with which the
+ output is topologically sorted and commits in parallel histories
+ are shown intermixed together based on the author timestamp.
+
* Various subcommands of "git submodule" refused to run from anywhere
other than the top of the working tree of the superproject, but
they have been taught to let you run from a subdirectory.
* On Cygwin, "cygstart" is now recognised as a possible way to start
a web browser (used in "help -w" and "instaweb" among others).
-### * "git status" learned status.branch and status.short configuration
-### variables to use --branch and --short options by default (override
-### with --no-branch and --no-short options from the command line).
+ * "git status" learned status.branch and status.short configuration
+ variables to use --branch and --short options by default (override
+ with --no-branch and --no-short options from the command line).
* "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
+ like we warn when more than one refs/ hierarchies share the same
name.
* "git rebase" learned "--[no-]autostash" option to save local
response was to stash them and re-run). This introduced a corner
case breakage to "git am --abort" but it has been fixed.
- * 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.
Performance, Internal Implementation, etc.
+ * On Cygwin, we used to use our own lstat(2) emulation that is
+ allegedly faster than the platform one in codepaths where some of
+ the information it returns did not matter, but it started to bite
+ us in a few codepaths where the trick it uses to cheat does show
+ breakages. This emulation has been removed and we use the native
+ lstat(2) emulation supplied by Cygwin now.
+
+ * The function attributes extensions are used to catch mistakes in
+ use of our own variadic functions that use NULL sentinel at the end
+ (i.e. like execl(3)) and format strings (i.e. like printf(3)).
+
+ * The code to allow configuration data to be read from in-tree blob
+ objects is in. This may help working in a bare repository and
+ submodule updates.
+
+ * Fetching between repositories with many refs employed O(n^2)
+ algorithm to match up the common objects, which has been corrected.
+
+ * The original way to specify remote repository using .git/branches/
+ used to have a nifty feature. The code to support the feature was
+ still in a function but the caller was changed not to call it 5
+ years ago, breaking that feature and leaving the supporting code
+ unreachable. The dead code has been removed.
+
* "git pack-refs" that races with new ref creation or deletion have
been susceptible to lossage of refs under right conditions, which
has been tightened up.
- * We read loose and packed rerferences in two steps, but after
+ * We read loose and packed references in two steps, but after
deciding to read a loose ref but before actually opening it to read
it, another process racing with us can unlink it, which would cause
us to barf. The codepath has been updated to retry when such a
track are contained in this release (see release notes to them for
details).
+ * Newer Net::SMTP::SSL module does not want the user programs to use
+ the default behaviour to let server certificate go without
+ verification, so by default enable the verification with a
+ mechanism to turn it off if needed.
+ (merge 35035bb rr/send-email-ssl-verify later to maint).
+
+ * When "git" is spawned in such a way that any of the low 3 file
+ descriptors is closed, our first open() may yield file descriptor 2,
+ and writing error message to it would screw things up in a big way.
+ (merge a11c396 tr/protect-low-3-fds later to maint).
+
+ * The mailmap mechanism unnecessarily downcased the e-mail addresses
+ in the output, and also ignored the human name when it is a single
+ character name.
+ (merge bd23794 jc/mailmap-case-insensitivity later to maint).
+
+ * In two places we did not check return value (expected to be a file
+ descriptor) correctly.
+ (merge a77f106 tr/fd-gotcha-fixes later to maint).
+
+ * Logic to auto-detect character encodings in the commit log message
+ did not reject overlong and invalid UTF-8 characters.
+ (merge 81050ac bc/commit-invalid-utf8 later to maint).
+
+ * Pass port number as a separate argument when "send-email" initializes
+ Net::SMTP, instead of as a part of the hostname, i.e. host:port.
+ This allows GSSAPI codepath to match with the hostname given.
+ (merge 1a741bf bc/send-email-use-port-as-separate-param later to maint).
+
+ * "git diff" refused to even show difference when core.safecrlf is
+ set to true (i.e. error out) and there are offending lines in the
+ working tree files.
+ (merge 5430bb2 jc/maint-diff-core-safecrlf later to maint).
+
+ * A test that should have failed but didn't revealed a bug that needs
+ to be corrected.
+ (merge 94d75d1 jc/t1512-fix later to maint).
+
+ * An overlong path to a .git directory may have overflown the
+ temporary path buffer used to create a name for lockfiles.
+ (merge 2fbd4f9 mh/maint-lockfile-overflow later to maint).
+
+ * Invocations of "git checkout" used internally by "git rebase" were
+ counted as "checkout", and affected later "git checkout -" to the
+ the user to an unexpected place.
+ (merge 3bed291 rr/rebase-checkout-reflog later to maint).
+
+ * The configuration variable column.ui was poorly documented.
+ (merge 5e62cc1 rr/column-doc later to maint).
+
* "git name-rev --refs=tags/v*" were forbidden, which was a bit
inconvenient (you had to give a pattern to match refs fully, like
--refs=refs/tags/v*).
* "git apply" parsed patches that add new files, generated by
programs other than Git, incorrectly. This is an old breakage in
- v1.7.11 and will need to be merged down to the maintanance tracks.
- (merge 212eb96 tr/maint-apply-non-git-patch-parsefix later to maint).
+ v1.7.11 and will need to be merged down to the maintenance tracks.
* Older cURL wanted piece of memory we call it with to be stable, but
we updated the auth material after handing it to a call.
- (merge a94cf2c bc/http-keep-memory-given-to-curl later to maint).
* "git pull" into nothing trashed "local changes" that were in the
index, and this avoids it.
- (merge b4dc085 jk/pull-into-dirty-unborn later to maint).
* Many "git submodule" operations do not work on a submodule at a
path whose name is not in ASCII.
- (merge bed9470 fg/submodule-non-ascii-path later to maint).
* "cherry-pick" had a small leak in an error codepath.
- (merge 706728a fc/sequencer-plug-leak later to maint).
* Logic used by git-send-email to suppress cc mishandled names like
"A U. Thor" <author@example.xz>, where the human readable part
around the name, and comparison was done between quoted and
unquoted strings). It also mishandled names that need RFC2047
quoting.
- (merge 1495266 mt/send-email-cc-match-fix later to maint).
* Call to discard_cache/discard_index (used when we use different
contents of the index in-core, in many operations like commit,
* "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).
- (merge 84cf246 jc/strbuf-branchname-fix later to maint).
* "git diff -c -p" was not showing a deleted line from a hunk when
another hunk immediately begins where the earlier one ends.
- (merge aac3857 mk/combine-diff-context-horizon-fix later to maint).
* "git log --ancestry-path A...B" did not work as expected, as it did
not pay attention to the fact that the merge base between A and B
was the bottom of the range being specified.
- (merge a765499 kb/ancestry-path-threedots later to maint).
* Mac OS X does not like to write(2) more than INT_MAX number of
bytes; work it around by chopping write(2) into smaller pieces.
- (merge 6c642a8 fc/macos-x-clipped-write later to maint).
* Newer MacOS X encourages the programs to compile and link with
their CommonCrypto, not with OpenSSL.
- (merge be4c828 da/darwin later to maint).
* "git clone foo/bar:baz" cannot be a request to clone from a remote
over git-over-ssh specified in the scp style. This case is now
detected and clones from a local repository at "foo/bar:baz".
- (merge 6000334 nd/clone-local-with-colon later to maint).
* When $HOME is misconfigured to point at an unreadable directory, we
used to complain and die. Loosen the check.
- (merge 4698c8f jn/config-ignore-inaccessible later to maint).
* "git subtree" (in contrib/) had one codepath with loose error
checks to lose data at the remote side.
- (merge 3212d56 jk/subtree-do-not-push-if-split-fails later to maint).
* "git fetch" into a shallow repository from a repository that does
not know about the shallow boundary commits (e.g. a different fork
from the repository the current shallow repository was cloned from)
did not work correctly.
- (merge 71d5f93 mh/fetch-into-shallow later to maint).
* "git checkout foo" DWIMs the intended "upstream" and turns it into
"git checkout -t -b foo remotes/origin/foo". This codepath has been
updated to correctly take existing remote definitions into account.
- (merge 229177a jh/checkout-auto-tracking later to maint).