1Git v1.8.5 Release Notes 2======================== 3 4Backward compatibility notes (for Git 2.0) 5------------------------------------------ 6 7When "git push [$there]" does not say what to push, we have used the 8traditional "matching" semantics so far (all your branches were sent 9to the remote as long as there already are branches of the same name 10over there). In Git 2.0, the default will change to the "simple" 11semantics that pushes: 12 13 - only the current branch to the branch with the same name, and only 14 when the current branch is set to integrate with that remote 15 branch, if you are pushing to the same remote as you fetch from; or 16 17 - only the current branch to the branch with the same name, if you 18 are pushing to a remote that is not where you usually fetch from. 19 20Use the user preference configuration variable "push.default" to 21change this. If you are an old-timer who is used to the "matching" 22semantics, you can set the variable to "matching" to keep the 23traditional behaviour. If you want to live in the future early, you 24can set it to "simple" today without waiting for Git 2.0. 25 26When "git add -u" (and "git add -A") is run inside a subdirectory and 27does not specify which paths to add on the command line, it 28will operate on the entire tree in Git 2.0 for consistency 29with "git commit -a" and other commands. There will be no 30mechanism to make plain "git add -u" behave like "git add -u .". 31Current users of "git add -u" (without a pathspec) should start 32training their fingers to explicitly say "git add -u ." 33before Git 2.0 comes. A warning is issued when these commands are 34run without a pathspec and when you have local changes outside the 35current directory, because the behaviour in Git 2.0 will be different 36from today's version in such a situation. 37 38In Git 2.0, "git add <path>" will behave as "git add -A <path>", so 39that "git add dir/" will notice paths you removed from the directory 40and record the removal. Versions before Git 2.0, including this 41release, will keep ignoring removals, but the users who rely on this 42behaviour are encouraged to start using "git add --ignore-removal <path>" 43now before 2.0 is released. 44 45The default prefix for "git svn" will change in Git 2.0. For a long 46time, "git svn" created its remote-tracking branches directly under 47refs/remotes, but it will place them under refs/remotes/origin/ unless 48it is told otherwise with its --prefix option. 49 50 51Updates since v1.8.4 52-------------------- 53 54Foreign interfaces, subsystems and ports. 55 56 * "git-svn" used with SVN 1.8.0 when talking over https:// connection 57 dumped core due to a bug in the serf library that SVN uses. Work 58 it around on our side, even though the SVN side is being fixed. 59 60 * On MacOS X, we detected if the filesystem needs the "pre-composed 61 unicode strings" workaround, but did not automatically enable it. 62 Now we do. 63 64 * remote-hg remote helper misbehaved when interacting with a local Hg 65 repository relative to the home directory, e.g. "clone hg::~/there". 66 67 * imap-send ported to OS X uses Apple's security framework instead of 68 OpenSSL one. 69 70 * Subversion 1.8.0 that was recently released breaks older subversion 71 clients coming over http/https in various ways. 72 73 * "git fast-import" treats an empty path given to "ls" as the root of 74 the tree. 75 76 77UI, Workflows & Features 78 79 * xdg-open can be used as a browser backend for "git web-browse" 80 (hence to show "git help -w" output), when available. 81 82 * "git grep" and "git show" pays attention to "--textconv" option 83 when these commands are told to operate on blob objects (e.g. "git 84 grep -e pattern HEAD:Makefile"). 85 86 * "git replace" helper no longer allows an object to be replaced with 87 another object of a different type to avoid confusion (you can 88 still manually craft such replacement using "git update-ref", as an 89 escape hatch). 90 91 * "git status" no longer prints dirty status information for 92 submodules for which submodule.$name.ignore is set to "all". 93 94 * "git rebase -i" honours core.abbrev when preparing the insn sheet 95 for editing. 96 97 * "git status" during a cherry-pick shows what original commit is 98 being picked. 99 100 * Instead of typing four capital letters "HEAD", you can say "@" now, 101 e.g. "git log @". 102 103 * "git check-ignore" follows the same rule as "git add" and "git 104 status" in that the ignore/exclude mechanism does not take effect 105 on paths that are already tracked. With "--no-index" option, it 106 can be used to diagnose which paths that should have been ignored 107 have been mistakenly added to the index. 108 109 * Some irrelevant "advice" messages that are shared with "git status" 110 output have been removed from the commit log template. 111 112 * "update-refs" learnt a "--stdin" option to read multiple update 113 requests and perform them in an all-or-none fashion. 114 115 * Just like "make -C <directory>", "git -C <directory> ..." tells Git 116 to go there before doing anything else. 117 118 * Just like "git checkout -" knows to check out and "git merge -" 119 knows to merge the branch you were previously on, "git cherry-pick" 120 now understands "git cherry-pick -" to pick from the previous 121 branch. 122 123 * "git status" now omits the prefix to make its output a comment in a 124 commit log editor, which is not necessary for human consumption. 125 Scripts that parse the output of "git status" are advised to use 126 "git status --porcelain" instead, as its format is stable and easier 127 to parse. 128 129 * Make "foo^{tag}" to peel a tag to itself, i.e. no-op., and fail if 130 "foo" is not a tag. "git rev-parse --verify v1.0^{tag}" would be 131 a more convenient way to say "test $(git cat-file -t v1.0) = tag". 132 133 * "git branch -v -v" (and "git status") did not distinguish among a 134 branch that does not build on any other branch, a branch that is in 135 sync with the branch it builds on, and a branch that is configured 136 to build on some other branch that no longer exists. 137 138 * Earlier we started rejecting an attempt to add 0{40} object name to 139 the index and to tree objects, but it sometimes is necessary to 140 allow so to be able to use tools like filter-branch to correct such 141 broken tree objects. "filter-branch" can again be used to to do 142 so. 143 144 * "git config" did not provide a way to set or access numbers larger 145 than a native "int" on the platform; it now provides 64-bit signed 146 integers on all platforms. 147 148 * "git pull --rebase" always chose to do the bog-standard flattening 149 rebase. You can tell it to run "rebase --preserve-merges" by 150 setting "pull.rebase" configuration to "preserve". 151 152 * "git push --no-thin" actually disables the "thin pack transfer" 153 optimization. 154 155 * Magic pathspecs like ":(icase)makefile" that matches both Makefile 156 and makefile and ":(glob)foo/**/bar" that matches "bar" in "foo" 157 and any subdirectory of "foo" can be used in more places. 158 159 * The "http.*" variables can now be specified per URL that the 160 configuration applies. For example, 161 162 [http] 163 sslVerify = true 164 [http "https://weak.example.com/"] 165 sslVerify = false 166 167 would flip http.sslVerify off only when talking to that specified 168 site. 169 170 * "git mv A B" when moving a submodule A has been taught to 171 relocate its working tree and to adjust the paths in the 172 .gitmodules file. 173 174 * "git blame" can now take more than one -L option to discover the 175 origin of multiple blocks of the lines. 176 177 * The http transport clients can optionally ask to save cookies 178 with http.savecookies configuration variable. 179 180 * "git push" learned a more fine grained control over a blunt 181 "--force" when requesting a non-fast-forward update with the 182 "--force-with-lease=<refname>:<expected object name>" option. 183 184 * "git diff --diff-filter=<classes of changes>" can now take 185 lowercase letters (e.g. "--diff-filter=d") to mean "show 186 everything but these classes". "git diff-files -q" is now a 187 deprecated synonym for "git diff-files --diff-filter=d". 188 189 * "git fetch" (hence "git pull" as well) learned to check 190 "fetch.prune" and "remote.*.prune" configuration variables and 191 to behave as if the "--prune" command line option was given. 192 193 * "git check-ignore -z" applied the NUL termination to both its input 194 (with --stdin) and its output, but "git check-attr -z" ignored the 195 option on the output side. Make both honor -z on the input and 196 output side the same way. 197 198 * "git whatchanged" may still be used by old timers, but mention of 199 it in documents meant for new users will only waste readers' time 200 wonderig what the difference is between it and "git log". Make it 201 less prominent in the general part of the documentation and explain 202 that it is merely a "git log" with different default behaviour in 203 its own document. 204 205 206Performance, Internal Implementation, etc. 207 208 * "git for-each-ref" when asking for merely the object name does not 209 have to parse the object pointed at by the refs; the codepath has 210 been optimized. 211 212 * The HTTP transport will try to use TCP keepalive when able. 213 214 * "git repack" is now written in C. 215 216 * Build procedure for MSVC has been updated. 217 218 * If a build-time fallback is set to "cat" instead of "less", we 219 should apply the same "no subprocess or pipe" optimization as we 220 apply to user-supplied GIT_PAGER=cat. 221 222 * Many commands use --dashed-option as a operation mode selector 223 (e.g. "git tag --delete") that the user can use at most one 224 (e.g. "git tag --delete --verify" is a nonsense) and you cannot 225 negate (e.g. "git tag --no-delete" is a nonsense). parse-options 226 API learned a new OPT_CMDMODE macro to make it easier to implement 227 such a set of options. 228 229 * OPT_BOOLEAN() in parse-options API was misdesigned to be "counting 230 up" but many subcommands expect it to behave as "on/off". Update 231 them to use OPT_BOOL() which is a proper boolean. 232 233 * "git gc" exits early without doing a double-work when it detects 234 that another instance of itself is already running. 235 236 * Under memory pressure and/or file descriptor pressure, we used to 237 close pack windows that are not used and also closed filehandle to 238 an open but unused packfiles. These are now controlled separately 239 to better cope with the load. 240 241Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups. 242 243 244Fixes since v1.8.4 245------------------ 246 247Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.8.4 in the maintenance 248track are contained in this release (see release notes to them for 249details). 250 251 * An ancient How-To on serving Git repositories on an HTTP server 252 lacked a warning that it has been mostly superseded with more 253 modern way. 254 (merge 6d52bc3 sc/doc-howto-dumb-http later to maint). 255 256 * The interaction between use of Perl in our test suite and NO_PERL 257 has been clarified a bit. 258 (merge f8fc0ee jn/test-prereq-perl-doc later to maint). 259 260 * The synopsis section of "git unpack-objects" documentation has been 261 clarified a bit. 262 (merge 61e2e22 vd/doc-unpack-objects later to maint). 263 264 * We did not generate HTML version of documentation to "git subtree" 265 in contrib/. 266 (merge 95c62fb jk/subtree-install-fix later to maint). 267 268 * A fast-import stream expresses a pathname with funny characters by 269 quoting them in C style; remote-hg remote helper forgot to unquote 270 such a path. 271 (merge 1136265 ap/remote-hg-unquote-cquote later to maint). 272 273 * "git reset -p HEAD" has a codepath to special case it to behave 274 differently from resetting to contents of other commits, but a 275 recent change broke it. 276 277 * Coloring around octopus merges in "log --graph" output was screwy. 278 (merge 339c17b hn/log-graph-color-octopus later to maint). 279 280 * "git checkout topic", when there is not yet a local "topic" branch 281 but there is a unique remote-tracking branch for a remote "topic" 282 branch, pretended as if "git checkout -t -b topic remote/$r/topic" 283 (for that unique remote $r) was run. This hack however was not 284 implemented for "git checkout topic --". 285 (merge bca3969 mm/checkout-auto-track-fix later to maint). 286 287 * One long-standing flaw in the pack transfer protocol used by "git 288 clone" was that there was no way to tell the other end which branch 289 "HEAD" points at, and the receiving end needed to guess. A new 290 capability has been defined in the pack protocol to convey this 291 information so that cloning from a repository with more than one 292 branches pointing at the same commit where the HEAD is at now 293 reliably sets the initial branch in the resulting repository. 294 (merge 360a326 jc/upload-pack-send-symref later to maint). 295 296 * We did not handle cases where http transport gets redirected during 297 the authorization request (e.g. from http:// to https://). 298 (merge 70900ed jk/http-auth-redirects later to maint). 299 300 * Bash prompting code to deal with an SVN remote as an upstream 301 were coded in a way not supported by older Bash versions (3.x). 302 (merge 52ec889 sg/prompt-svn-remote-fix later to maint). 303 304 * The fall-back parsing of commit objects with broken author or 305 committer lines were less robust than ideal in picking up the 306 timestamps. 307 (merge 03818a4 jk/split-broken-ident later to maint). 308 309 * "git rev-list --objects ^v1.0^ v1.0" gave v1.0 tag itself in the 310 output, but "git rev-list --objects v1.0^..v1.0" did not. 311 (merge 895c5ba jc/revision-range-unpeel later to maint). 312 313 * "git clone" gave some progress messages to the standard output, not 314 to the standard error, and did not allow suppressing them with the 315 --no-progress option. 316 (merge 643f918 jk/clone-progress-to-stderr later to maint). 317 318 * "format-patch --from=<whom>" forgot to omit unnecessary in-body 319 from line, i.e. when <whom> is the same as the real author. 320 (merge 662cc30 jk/format-patch-from later to maint). 321 322 * "git shortlog" used to choke and die when there is a malformed 323 commit (e.g. missing authors); it now simply ignore such a commit 324 and keeps going. 325 (merge cd4f09e jk/shortlog-tolerate-broken-commit later to maint). 326 327 * "git merge-recursive" did not parse its "--diff-algorithm=" command 328 line option correctly. 329 (merge 6562928 jk/diff-algo later to maint). 330 331 * When running "fetch -q", a long silence while the sender side 332 computes the set of objects to send can be mistaken by proxies as 333 dropped connection. The server side has been taught to send a 334 small empty messages to keep the connection alive. 335 (merge 115dedd jk/upload-pack-keepalive later to maint). 336 337 * "git rebase" had a portability regression in v1.8.4 to trigger a 338 bug in some BSD shell implementations. 339 (merge 99855dd mm/rebase-continue-freebsd-WB later to maint). 340 341 * "git branch --track" had a minor regression in v1.8.3.2 and later 342 that made it impossible to base your local work on anything but a 343 local branch of the upstream repository you are tracking from. 344 (merge b0f49ff jh/checkout-auto-tracking later to maint). 345 346 * When the webserver responds with "405 Method Not Allowed", "git 347 http-backend" should tell the client what methods are allowed with 348 the "Allow" header. 349 (merge 9247be0 bc/http-backend-allow-405 later to maint). 350 351 * When there is no sufficient overlap between old and new history 352 during a "git fetch" into a shallow repository, objects that the 353 sending side knows the receiving end has were unnecessarily sent. 354 (merge f21d2a7 nd/fetch-into-shallow later to maint). 355 356 * "git cvsserver" computed the permission mode bits incorrectly for 357 executable files. 358 (merge 1b48d56 jc/cvsserver-perm-bit-fix later to maint). 359 360 * When send-email comes up with an error message to die with upon 361 failure to start an SSL session, it tried to read the error string 362 from a wrong place. 363 (merge 6cb0c88 bc/send-email-ssl-die-message-fix later to maint). 364 365 * The implementation of "add -i" has a crippling code to work around 366 ActiveState Perl limitation but it by mistake also triggered on Git 367 for Windows where MSYS perl is used. 368 (merge df17e77 js/add-i-mingw later to maint). 369 370 * We made sure that we notice the user-supplied GIT_DIR is actually a 371 gitfile, but did not do the same when the default ".git" is a 372 gitfile. 373 (merge 487a2b7 nd/git-dir-pointing-at-gitfile later to maint). 374 375 * When an object is not found after checking the packfiles and then 376 loose object directory, read_sha1_file() re-checks the packfiles to 377 prevent racing with a concurrent repacker; teach the same logic to 378 has_sha1_file(). 379 (merge 45e8a74 jk/has-sha1-file-retry-packed later to maint). 380 381 * "git commit --author=$name", when $name is not in the canonical 382 "A. U. Thor <au.thor@example.xz>" format, looks for a matching name 383 from existing history, but did not consult mailmap to grab the 384 preferred author name. 385 (merge ea16794 ap/commit-author-mailmap later to maint). 386 387 * "git ls-files -k" needs to crawl only the part of the working tree 388 that may overlap the paths in the index to find killed files, but 389 shared code with the logic to find all the untracked files, which 390 made it unnecessarily inefficient. 391 (merge 680be04 jc/ls-files-killed-optim later to maint). 392 393 * The commit object names in the insn sheet that was prepared at the 394 beginning of "rebase -i" session can become ambiguous as the 395 rebasing progresses and the repository gains more commits. Make 396 sure the internal record is kept with full 40-hex object names. 397 (merge 75c6976 es/rebase-i-no-abbrev later to maint). 398 399 * "git rebase --preserve-merges" internally used the merge machinery 400 and as a side effect, left merge summary message in the log, but 401 when rebasing, there should not be a need for merge summary. 402 (merge a9f739c rt/rebase-p-no-merge-summary later to maint). 403 404 * A call to xread() was used without a loop around to cope with short 405 read in the codepath to stream new contents to a pack. 406 (merge e92527c js/xread-in-full later to maint). 407 408 * "git rebase -i" forgot that the comment character can be 409 configurable while reading its insn sheet. 410 (merge 7bca7af es/rebase-i-respect-core-commentchar later to maint). 411 412 * The mailmap support code read past the allocated buffer when the 413 mailmap file ended with an incomplete line. 414 (merge f972a16 jk/mailmap-incomplete-line later to maint). 415 416 * We used to send a large request to read(2)/write(2) as a single 417 system call, which was bad from the latency point of view when 418 the operation needs to be killed, and also triggered an error on 419 broken 64-bit systems that refuse to take more than 2GB read or 420 write in one go. 421 (merge a487916 sp/clip-read-write-to-8mb later to maint). 422 423 * "git fetch" that auto-followed tags incorrectly reused the 424 connection with Git-aware transport helper (like the sample "ext::" 425 helper shipped with Git). 426 (merge 0f73f8b jc/transport-do-not-use-connect-twice-in-fetch later to maint). 427 428 * "git log --full-diff -- <pathspec>" showed a huge diff for paths 429 outside the given <pathspec> for each commit, instead of showing 430 the change relative to the parent of the commit. "git reflog -p" 431 had a similar problem. 432 (merge 838f9a1 tr/log-full-diff-keep-true-parents later to maint). 433 434 * Setting submodule.*.path configuration variable to true (without 435 giving "= value") caused Git to segfault. 436 (merge 4b05440 jl/some-submodule-config-are-not-boolean later to maint). 437 438 * "git rebase -i" (there could be others, as the root cause is pretty 439 generic) fed a random, data dependeant string to 'echo' and 440 expects it to come out literally, corrupting its error message. 441 (merge 89b0230 mm/no-shell-escape-in-die-message later to maint). 442 443 * Some people still use rather old versions of bash, which cannot 444 grok some constructs like 'printf -v varname' the prompt and 445 completion code started to use recently. 446 (merge a44aa69 bc/completion-for-bash-3.0 later to maint). 447 448 * Code to read configuration from a blob object did not compile on 449 platforms with fgetc() etc. implemented as macros. 450 (merge 49d6cfa hv/config-from-blob later to maint-1.8.3). 451 452 * The recent "short-cut clone connectivity check" topic broke a 453 shallow repository when a fetch operation tries to auto-follow tags. 454 (merge 6da8bdc nd/fetch-pack-shallow-fix later to maint-1.8.3).