1 Git v1.7.10 Release Notes
2 =========================
7 * From this release on, the "git merge" command in an interactive
8 session will start an editor when it automatically resolves the
9 merge for the user to explain the resulting commit, just like the
10 "git commit" command does when it wasn't given a commit message.
12 If you have a script that runs "git merge" and keeps its standard
13 input and output attached to the user's terminal, and if you do not
14 want the user to explain the resulting merge commits, you can
15 export GIT_MERGE_AUTOEDIT environment variable set to "no", like
20 export GIT_MERGE_AUTOEDIT
22 to disable this behavior (if you want your users to explain their
23 merge commits, you do not have to do anything). Alternatively, you
24 can give the "--no-edit" option to individual invocations of the
25 "git merge" command if you know everybody who uses your script has
28 * The "--binary/-b" options to "git am" have been a no-op for quite a
29 while and were deprecated in mid 2008 (v1.6.0). When you give these
30 options to "git am", it will now warn and ask you not to use them.
32 * When you do not tell which branches and tags to push to the "git
33 push" command in any way, the command used "matching refs" rule to
34 update remote branches and tags with branches and tags with the
35 same name you locally have. In future versions of Git, this will
36 change to push out only your current branch according to either the
37 "upstream" or the "current" rule. Although "upstream" may be more
38 powerful once the user understands Git better, the semantics
39 "current" gives is simpler and easier to understand for beginners
40 and may be a safer and better default option. We haven't decided
41 yet which one to switch to.
47 UI, Workflows & Features
49 * various "gitk" updates.
50 - show the path to the top level directory in the window title
51 - update preference edit dialog
52 - display file list correctly when directories are given on command line
53 - make "git-describe" output in the log message into a clickable link
54 - avoid matching the UNIX timestamp part when searching all fields
55 - give preference to symbolic font names like sans & monospace
56 - allow comparing two commits using a mark
57 - "gitk" honors log.showroot configuration.
59 * Teams for localizing the messages from the Porcelain layer of
60 commands are starting to form, thanks to Jiang Xin who volunteered
61 to be the localization coordinator. Translated messages for
62 simplified Chinese, Swedish and Portuguese are available.
64 * The configuration mechanism learned an "include" facility; an
65 assignment to the include.path pseudo-variable causes the named
66 file to be included in-place when Git looks up configuration
69 * A content filter (clean/smudge) used to be just a way to make the
70 recorded contents "more useful", and allowed to fail; a filter can
71 now optionally be marked as "required".
73 * Options whose names begin with "--no-" (e.g. the "--no-verify"
74 option of the "git commit" command) can be negated by omitting
75 "no-" from its name, e.g. "git commit --verify".
77 * "git am" learned to pass "-b" option to underlying "git mailinfo", so
78 that a bracketed string other than "PATCH" at the beginning can be kept.
80 * "git clone" learned "--single-branch" option to limit cloning to a
81 single branch (surprise!); tags that do not point into the history
82 of the branch are not fetched.
84 * "git clone" learned to detach the HEAD in the resulting repository
85 when the user specifies a tag with "--branch" (e.g., "--branch=v1.0").
86 Clone also learned to print the usual "detached HEAD" advice in such
87 a case, similar to "git checkout v1.0".
89 * When showing a patch while ignoring whitespace changes, the context
90 lines are taken from the postimage, in order to make it easier to
93 * "git diff --stat" learned to adjust the width of the output on
94 wider terminals, and give more columns to pathnames as needed.
96 * "diff-highlight" filter (in contrib/) was updated to produce more
97 aesthetically pleasing output.
99 * "fsck" learned "--no-dangling" option to omit dangling object
102 * "git log -G" and "git log -S" learned to pay attention to the "-i"
103 option. With "-i", "log -G" ignores the case when finding patch
104 hunks that introduce or remove a string that matches the given
105 pattern. Similarly with "-i", "log -S" ignores the case when
106 finding the commit the given block of text appears or disappears
109 * "git merge" in an interactive session learned to spawn the editor
110 by default to let the user edit the auto-generated merge message,
111 to encourage people to explain their merges better. Legacy scripts
112 can export GIT_MERGE_AUTOEDIT=no to retain the historical behavior.
113 Both "git merge" and "git pull" can be given --no-edit from the
114 command line to accept the auto-generated merge message.
116 * The advice message given when the user didn't give enough clue on
117 what to merge to "git pull" and "git merge" has been updated to
118 be more concise and easier to understand.
120 * "git push" learned the "--prune" option, similar to "git fetch".
122 * The whole directory that houses a top-level superproject managed by
123 "git submodule" can be moved to another place.
125 * "git symbolic-ref" learned the "--short" option to abbreviate the
126 refname it shows unambiguously.
128 * "git tag --list" can be given "--points-at <object>" to limit its
129 output to those that point at the given object.
131 * "gitweb" allows intermediate entries in the directory hierarchy
132 that leads to a project to be clicked, which in turn shows the
133 list of projects inside that directory.
135 * "gitweb" learned to read various pieces of information for the
136 repositories lazily, instead of reading everything that could be
137 needed (including the ones that are not necessary for a specific
140 * Project search in "gitweb" shows the substring that matched in the
141 project name and description highlighted.
143 * HTTP transport learned to authenticate with a proxy if needed.
145 * A new script "diffall" is added to contrib/; it drives an
146 external tool to perform a directory diff of two Git revisions
147 in one go, unlike "difftool" that compares one file at a time.
151 * Improved handling of views, labels and branches in "git-p4" (in contrib).
153 * "git-p4" (in contrib) suffered from unnecessary merge conflicts when
154 p4 expanded the embedded $RCS$-like keywords; it can be now told to
157 * Some "git-svn" updates.
159 * "vcs-svn"/"svn-fe" learned to read dumps with svn-deltas and
160 support incremental imports.
162 * "git difftool/mergetool" learned to drive DeltaWalker.
166 * Unnecessary calls to parse_object() "git upload-pack" makes in
167 response to "git fetch", have been eliminated, to help performance
168 in repositories with excessive number of refs.
170 Internal Implementation (please report possible regressions)
172 * Recursive call chains in "git index-pack" to deal with long delta
173 chains have been flattened, to reduce the stack footprint.
175 * Use of add_extra_ref() API is now gone, to make it possible to
176 cleanly restructure the overall refs API.
178 * The command line parser of "git pack-objects" now uses parse-options
181 * The test suite supports the new "test_pause" helper function.
183 * Parallel to the test suite, there is a beginning of performance
184 benchmarking framework.
186 * t/Makefile is adjusted to prevent newer versions of GNU make from
187 running tests in seemingly random order.
189 * The code to check if a path points at a file beyond a symbolic link
190 has been restructured to be thread-safe.
192 * When pruning directories that has become empty during "git prune"
193 and "git prune-packed", call closedir() that iterates over a
194 directory before rmdir() it.
196 Also contains minor documentation updates and code clean-ups.
202 Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.7.9 in the maintenance
203 releases are contained in this release (see release notes to them for
206 * Build with NO_PERL_MAKEMAKER was broken and Git::I18N did not work
207 with versions of Perl older than 5.8.3.
208 (merge 5eb660e ab/perl-i18n later to maint).
210 * "git tag -s" honored "gpg.program" configuration variable since
211 1.7.9, but "git tag -v" and "git verify-tag" didn't.
212 (merge a2c2506 az/verify-tag-use-gpg-config later to maint).
214 * "configure" script learned to take "--with-sane-tool-path" from the
215 command line to record SANE_TOOL_PATH (used to avoid broken platform
216 tools in /usr/bin) in config.mak.autogen. This may be useful for
217 people on Solaris who have saner tools outside /usr/xpg[46]/bin.
219 * zsh port of bash completion script needed another workaround.