Documentation / RelNotes / 2.11.0.txton commit Merge branch 'rs/c-auto-resets-attributes' (578e602)
   1Git 2.11 Release Notes
   2======================
   3
   4Updates since v2.10
   5-------------------
   6
   7UI, Workflows & Features
   8
   9 * "git format-patch --cover-letter HEAD^" to format a single patch
  10   with a separate cover letter now numbers the output as [PATCH 0/1]
  11   and [PATCH 1/1] by default.
  12
  13 * An incoming "git push" that attempts to push too many bytes can now
  14   be rejected by setting a new configuration variable at the receiving
  15   end.
  16
  17 * "git nosuchcommand --help" said "No manual entry for gitnosuchcommand",
  18   which was not intuitive, given that "git nosuchcommand" said "git:
  19   'nosuchcommand' is not a git command".
  20
  21 * "git clone --resurse-submodules --reference $path $URL" is a way to
  22   reduce network transfer cost by borrowing objects in an existing
  23   $path repository when cloning the superproject from $URL; it
  24   learned to also peek into $path for presense of corresponding
  25   repositories of submodules and borrow objects from there when able.
  26
  27 * The "git diff --submodule={short,log}" mechanism has been enhanced
  28   to allow "--submodule=diff" to show the patch between the submodule
  29   commits bound to the superproject.
  30
  31 * Even though "git hash-objects", which is a tool to take an
  32   on-filesystem data stream and put it into the Git object store,
  33   allowed to perform the "outside-world-to-Git" conversions (e.g.
  34   end-of-line conversions and application of the clean-filter), and
  35   it had the feature on by default from very early days, its reverse
  36   operation "git cat-file", which takes an object from the Git object
  37   store and externalize for the consumption by the outside world,
  38   lacked an equivalent mechanism to run the "Git-to-outside-world"
  39   conversion.  The command learned the "--filters" option to do so.
  40
  41 * Output from "git diff" can be made easier to read by selecting
  42   which lines are common and which lines are added/deleted
  43   intelligently when the lines before and after the changed section
  44   are the same.  A command line option is added to help with the
  45   experiment to find a good heuristics.
  46
  47 * In some projects, it is common to use "[RFC PATCH]" as the subject
  48   prefix for a patch meant for discussion rather than application.  A
  49   new option "--rfc" was a short-hand for "--subject-prefix=RFC PATCH"
  50   to help the participants of such projects.
  51
  52 * "git add --chmod=+x <pathspec>" added recently only toggled the
  53   executable bit for paths that are either new or modified. This has
  54   been corrected to flip the executable bit for all paths that match
  55   the given pathspec.
  56
  57 * When "git format-patch --stdout" output is placed as an in-body
  58   header and it uses the RFC2822 header folding, "git am" failed to
  59   put the header line back into a single logical line.  The
  60   underlying "git mailinfo" was taught to handle this properly.
  61
  62 * "gitweb" can spawn "highlight" to show blob contents with
  63   (programming) language-specific syntax highlighting, but only
  64   when the language is known.  "highlight" can however be told
  65   to make the guess itself by giving it "--force" option, which
  66   has been enabled.
  67
  68 * "git gui" l10n to Portuguese.
  69
  70
  71Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc.
  72
  73 * The delta-base-cache mechanism has been a key to the performance in
  74   a repository with a tightly packed packfile, but it did not scale
  75   well even with a larger value of core.deltaBaseCacheLimit.
  76
  77 * Enhance "git status --porcelain" output by collecting more data on
  78   the state of the index and the working tree files, which may
  79   further be used to teach git-prompt (in contrib/) to make fewer
  80   calls to git.
  81
  82 * Extract a small helper out of the function that reads the authors
  83   script file "git am" internally uses.
  84   (merge a77598e jc/am-read-author-file later to maint).
  85
  86 * Lifts calls to exit(2) and die() higher in the callchain in
  87   sequencer.c files so that more helper functions in it can be used
  88   by callers that want to handle error conditions themselves.
  89
  90 * "git am" has been taught to make an internal call to "git apply"'s
  91   innards without spawning the latter as a separate process.
  92
  93 * The ref-store abstraction was introduced to the refs API so that we
  94   can plug in different backends to store references.
  95
  96 * The "unsigned char sha1[20]" to "struct object_id" conversion
  97   continues.  Notable changes in this round includes that ce->sha1,
  98   i.e. the object name recorded in the cache_entry, turns into an
  99   object_id.
 100
 101 * JGit can show a fake ref "capabilities^{}" to "git fetch" when it
 102   does not advertise any refs, but "git fetch" was not prepared to
 103   see such an advertisement.  When the other side disconnects without
 104   giving any ref advertisement, we used to say "there may not be a
 105   repository at that URL", but we may have seen other advertisement
 106   like "shallow" and ".have" in which case we definitely know that a
 107   repository is there.  The code to detect this case has also been
 108   updated.
 109
 110 * Some codepaths in "git pack-objects" were not ready to use an
 111   existing pack bitmap; now they are and as the result they have
 112   become faster.
 113
 114 * The codepath in "git fsck" to detect malformed tree objects has
 115   been updated not to die but keep going after detecting them.
 116
 117
 118Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups.
 119
 120
 121Fixes since v2.10
 122-----------------
 123
 124Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v2.9 in the maintenance
 125track are contained in this release (see the maintenance releases'
 126notes for details).
 127
 128 * Clarify various ways to specify the "revision ranges" in the
 129   documentation.
 130
 131 * "diff-highlight" script (in contrib/) learned to work better with
 132   "git log -p --graph" output.
 133
 134 * The test framework left the number of tests and success/failure
 135   count in the t/test-results directory, keyed by the name of the
 136   test script plus the process ID.  The latter however turned out not
 137   to serve any useful purpose.  The process ID part of the filename
 138   has been removed.
 139
 140 * Having a submodule whose ".git" repository is somehow corrupt
 141   caused a few commands that recurse into submodules loop forever.
 142
 143 * "git symbolic-ref -d HEAD" happily removes the symbolic ref, but
 144   the resulting repository becomes an invalid one.  Teach the command
 145   to forbid removal of HEAD.
 146
 147 * A test spawned a short-lived background process, which sometimes
 148   prevented the test directory from getting removed at the end of the
 149   script on some platforms.
 150
 151 * Update a few tests that used to use GIT_CURL_VERBOSE to use the
 152   newer GIT_TRACE_CURL.
 153
 154 * "git pack-objects --include-tag" was taught that when we know that
 155   we are sending an object C, we want a tag B that directly points at
 156   C but also a tag A that points at the tag B.  We used to miss the
 157   intermediate tag B in some cases.
 158   (merge b773dde jk/pack-tag-of-tag later to maint).
 159
 160 * Update Japanese translation for "git-gui".
 161   (merge 02748bc sy/git-gui-i18n-ja later to maint).
 162
 163 * "git fetch http::/site/path" did not die correctly and segfaulted
 164   instead.
 165   (merge d63ed6e jk/fix-remote-curl-url-wo-proto later to maint).
 166
 167 * "git commit-tree" stopped reading commit.gpgsign configuration
 168   variable that was meant for Porcelain "git commit" in Git 2.9; we
 169   forgot to update "git gui" to look at the configuration to match
 170   this change.
 171   (merge f14a310 js/git-gui-commit-gpgsign later to maint).
 172
 173 * "git add --chmod=+x" added recently lacked documentation, which has
 174   been corrected.
 175   (merge 7ef7903 et/add-chmod-x later to maint).
 176
 177 * "git log --cherry-pick" used to include merge commits as candidates
 178   to be matched up with other commits, resulting a lot of wasted time.
 179   The patch-id generation logic has been updated to ignore merges to
 180   avoid the wastage.
 181   (merge 7c81040 jk/patch-ids-no-merges later to maint).
 182
 183 * The http transport (with curl-multi option, which is the default
 184   these days) failed to remove curl-easy handle from a curlm session,
 185   which led to unnecessary API failures.
 186   (merge 2abc848 ew/http-do-not-forget-to-call-curl-multi-remove-handle later to maint).
 187
 188 * There were numerous corner cases in which the configuration files
 189   are read and used or not read at all depending on the directory a
 190   Git command was run, leading to inconsistent behaviour.  The code
 191   to set-up repository access at the beginning of a Git process has
 192   been updated to fix them.
 193   (merge 4d0efa1 jk/setup-sequence-update later to maint).
 194
 195 * "git diff -W" output needs to extend the context backward to
 196   include the header line of the current function and also forward to
 197   include the body of the entire current function up to the header
 198   line of the next one.  This process may have to merge to adjacent
 199   hunks, but the code forgot to do so in some cases.
 200   (merge 45d2f75 rs/xdiff-merge-overlapping-hunks-for-W-context later to maint).
 201
 202 * Performance tests done via "t/perf" did not use the same set of
 203   build configuration if the user relied on autoconf generated
 204   configuration.
 205   (merge cd5c281 ks/perf-build-with-autoconf later to maint).
 206
 207 * "git format-patch --base=..." feature that was recently added
 208   showed the base commit information after "-- " e-mail signature
 209   line, which turned out to be inconvenient.  The base information
 210   has been moved above the signature line.
 211   (merge 480871e jt/format-patch-base-info-above-sig later to maint).
 212
 213 * More i18n.
 214   (merge 43073f8 va/i18n later to maint).
 215
 216 * Even when "git pull --rebase=preserve" (and the underlying "git
 217   rebase --preserve") can complete without creating any new commit
 218   (i.e. fast-forwards), it still insisted on having a usable ident
 219   information (read: user.email is set correctly), which was less
 220   than nice.  As the underlying commands used inside "git rebase"
 221   would fail with a more meaningful error message and advice text
 222   when the bogus ident matters, this extra check was removed.
 223   (merge 1e461c4 jk/rebase-i-drop-ident-check later to maint).
 224
 225 * "git gc --aggressive" used to limit the delta-chain length to 250,
 226   which is way too deep for gaining additional space savings and is
 227   detrimental for runtime performance.  The limit has been reduced to
 228   50.
 229   (merge 07e7dbf jk/reduce-gc-aggressive-depth later to maint).
 230
 231 * Documentation for individual configuration variables to control use
 232   of color (like `color.grep`) said that their default value is
 233   'false', instead of saying their default is taken from `color.ui`.
 234   When we updated the default value for color.ui from 'false' to
 235   'auto' quite a while ago, all of them broke.  This has been
 236   corrected.
 237   (merge 14d16e2 mm/config-color-ui-default-to-auto later to maint).
 238
 239 * The pretty-format specifier "%C(auto)" used by the "log" family of
 240   commands to enable coloring of the output is taught to also issue a
 241   color-reset sequence to the output.
 242   (merge c99ad27 rs/c-auto-resets-attributes later to maint).
 243
 244 * A shell script example in check-ref-format documentation has been
 245   fixed.
 246   (merge 92dece7 ep/doc-check-ref-format-example later to maint).
 247
 248 * "git checkout <word>" does not follow the usual disambiguation
 249   rules when the <word> can be both a rev and a path, to allow
 250   checking out a branch 'foo' in a project that happens to have a
 251   file 'foo' in the working tree without having to disambiguate.
 252   This was poorly documented and the check was incorrect when the
 253   command was run from a subdirectory.
 254   (merge b829b94 nd/checkout-disambiguation later to maint).
 255
 256 * Some codepaths in "git diff" used regexec(3) on a buffer that was
 257   mmap(2)ed, which may not have a terminating NUL, leading to a read
 258   beyond the end of the mapped region.  This was fixed by introducing
 259   a regexec_buf() helper that takes a <ptr,len> pair with REG_STARTEND
 260   extension.
 261   (merge b7d36ff js/regexec-buf later to maint).
 262
 263 * The procedure to build Git on Mac OS X for Travis CI hardcoded the
 264   internal directory structure we assumed HomeBrew uses, which was a
 265   no-no.  The procedure has been updated to ask HomeBrew things we
 266   need to know to fix this.
 267   (merge f86f49b ls/travis-homebrew-path-fix later to maint).
 268
 269 * When "git rebase -i" is given a broken instruction, it told the
 270   user to fix it with "--edit-todo", but didn't say what the step
 271   after that was (i.e. "--continue").
 272   (merge 37875b4 rt/rebase-i-broken-insn-advise later to maint).
 273
 274 * Documentation around tools to import from CVS was fairly outdated.
 275   (merge 106b672 jk/doc-cvs-update later to maint).
 276
 277 * "git clone --recurse-submodules" lost the progress eye-candy in
 278   recent update, which has been corrected.
 279
 280 * A low-level function verify_packfile() was meant to show errors
 281   that were detected without dying itself, but under some conditions
 282   it didn't and died instead, which has been fixed.
 283   (merge a9445d859e jk/verify-packfile-gently later to maint).
 284
 285 * When "git fetch" tries to find where the history of the repository
 286   it runs in has diverged from what the other side has, it has a
 287   mechanism to avoid digging too deep into irrelevant side branches.
 288   This however did not work well over the "smart-http" transport due
 289   to a design bug, which has been fixed.
 290   (merge 06b3d386e0 jt/fetch-pack-in-vain-count-with-stateless later to maint).
 291
 292 * In the codepath that comes up with the hostname to be used in an
 293   e-mail when the user didn't tell us, we looked at ai_canonname
 294   field in struct addrinfo without making sure it is not NULL first.
 295   (merge c375a7efa3 jk/ident-ai-canonname-could-be-null later to maint).
 296
 297 * "git worktree", even though it used the default_abbrev setting that
 298   ought to be affected by core.abbrev configuration variable, ignored
 299   the variable setting.  The command has been taught to read the
 300   default set of configuration variables to correct this.
 301   (merge d49028e6e7 jc/worktree-config later to maint).
 302
 303 * "git init" tried to record core.worktree in the repository's
 304   'config' file when GIT_WORK_TREE environment variable was set and
 305   it was different from where GIT_DIR appears as ".git" at its top,
 306   but the logic was faulty when .git is a "gitdir:" file that points
 307   at the real place, causing trouble in working trees that are
 308   managed by "git worktree".  This has been corrected.
 309
 310 * Codepaths that read from an on-disk loose object were too loose in
 311   validating what they are reading is a proper object file and
 312   sometimes read past the data they read from the disk, which has
 313   been corrected.  H/t to Gustavo Grieco for reporting.
 314   (merge d21f842690 jc/verify-loose-object-header later to maint).
 315
 316 * The original command line syntax for "git merge", which was "git
 317   merge <msg> HEAD <parent>...", has been deprecated for quite some
 318   time, and "git gui" was the last in-tree user of the syntax.  This
 319   is finally fixed, so that we can move forward with the deprecation.
 320   (merge ff65e796f0 rs/git-gui-use-modern-git-merge-syntax later to maint).
 321
 322 * An author name, that spelled a backslash-quoted double quote in the
 323   human readable part "My \"double quoted\" name", was not unquoted
 324   correctly while applying a patch from a piece of e-mail.
 325   (merge f357e5de31 kd/mailinfo-quoted-string later to maint).
 326
 327 * Doc update to clarify what "log -3 --reverse" does.
 328   (merge 04be69478f pb/rev-list-reverse-with-count later to maint).
 329
 330 * Other minor doc, test and build updates and code cleanups.
 331   (merge e78d57e bw/pathspec-remove-unused-extern-decl later to maint).
 332   (merge ce25e4c rs/checkout-some-states-are-const later to maint).
 333   (merge a8342a4 rs/strbuf-remove-fix later to maint).
 334   (merge b56aa5b rs/unpack-trees-reduce-file-scope-global later to maint).
 335   (merge 5efc60c mr/vcs-svn-printf-ulong later to maint).
 336   (merge a22ae75 rs/cocci later to maint).
 337   (merge 45ccef87b3 rs/copy-array later to maint).
 338   (merge 8201688ecd dt/mailinfo later to maint).