Documentation/RelNotes/1.8.0.txt

   1 Git v1.8.0 Release Notes
   2 ========================
   3
   4 Backward compatibility notes
   5 ----------------------------
   6
   7 In the next major release, we will change the behaviour of the "git
   8 push" command.  When "git push [$there]" does not say what to push, we
   9 have used the traditional "matching" semantics (all your branches were
  10 sent to the remote as long as there already are branches of the same
  11 name over there).  We will use the "simple" semantics, that pushes the
  12 current branch to the branch with the same name only when the current
  13 branch is set to integrate with that remote branch.  There is a user
  14 preference configuration variable "push.default" to change this, and
  15 "git push" will warn about the upcoming change until you set this
  16 variable.
  17
  18 "git branch --set-upstream" is deprecated and may be removed in a
  19 relatively distant future.  "git branch [-u|--set-upstream-to]" has
  20 been introduced with a saner order of arguments.
  21
  22
  23 Updates since v1.7.12
  24 ---------------------
  25
  26 UI, Workflows & Features
  27
  28  * A credential helper for Win32 to allow access to the keychain of
  29    the logged-in user has been added.
  30
  31  * An initial port to HP NonStop.
  32
  33  * A credential helper to allow access to the Gnome keyring has been
  34    added.
  35
  36  * When "git am" sanitizes the Subject: line, we strip the prefix from
  37    "Re: subject" and also from a less common "re: subject", but left
  38    even less common "RE: subject" intact.
  39
  40  * It was tempting to say "git branch --set-upstream origin/master",
  41    but that tells Git to arrange the local branch "origin/master" to
  42    integrate with the currently checked out branch, which is highly
  43    unlikely what the user meant.  The option is deprecated; use the
  44    new "--set-upstream-to" (with a short-and-sweet "-u") option
  45    instead.
  46
  47  * "git cherry-pick" learned the "--allow-empty-message" option to
  48    allow it to replay a commit without any log message.
  49
  50  * After "git cherry-pick -s" gave control back to the user asking
  51    help to resolve conflicts, concluding "git commit" used to need to
  52    be run with "-s" if the user wants to sign it off; now the command
  53    leaves the sign-off line in the log template.
  54
  55  * "git daemon" learned the "--access-hook" option to allow an
  56    external command to decline service based on the client address,
  57    repository path, etc.
  58
  59  * "git difftool --dir-diff" learned to use symbolic links to prepare
  60    temporary copy of the working tree when available.
  61
  62  * "git grep" learned to use a non-standard pattern type by default if
  63    a configuration variable tells it to.
  64
  65  * "git merge-base" learned "--is-ancestor A B" option to tell if A is
  66    an ancestor of B.  The result is indicated by its exit status code.
  67
  68  * "git mergetool" allows users to override the actual command used
  69    with the mergetool.$name.cmd configuration variable even for built-in
  70    mergetool backends.
  71
  72  * The "-Xours" backend option to "git merge -s recursive" now takes
  73    effect even on binary files.
  74
  75  * "git rebase -i" learned the "--edit-todo" option to open an editor
  76    to edit the insn sheet.
  77
  78
  79 Foreign Interface
  80
  81  * "git svn" has been updated to work with SVN 1.7.
  82
  83  * "git p4" learned "--conflicts" option to specify what to do when
  84    encountering a conflict during "p4 submit".
  85
  86
  87 Performance, Internal Implementation, etc. (please report possible regressions)
  88
  89  * Git ships with a fall-back regexp implementation for platforms with
  90    buggy regexp library, but it was easy for people to keep using their
  91    platform regexp.  A new test has been added to check this.
  92
  93  * The "check-docs" build target has been updated and greatly
  94    simplified.
  95
  96  * The test suite is run under MALLOC_CHECK_ when running with glibc
  97    that supports the feature.
  98
  99  * The documentation in the TeXinfo format was using indented output
 100    for materials meant to be examples that are better typeset in
 101    monospace.
 102
 103  * Compatibility wrapper around some mkdir(2) implementations that
 104    reject parameter with trailing slash has been introduced.
 105
 106  * Compatibility wrapper for systems that lack usable setitimer() has
 107    been added.
 108
 109  * The option parsing of "git checkout" had error checking, dwim and
 110    defaulting missing options, all mixed in the code, and issuing an
 111    appropriate error message with useful context was getting harder.
 112    The code has been reorganized to allow giving a proper diagnosis
 113    when the user says "git checkout -b -t foo bar" (e.g. "-t" is not a
 114    good name for a branch).
 115
 116  * Many internal uses of "git merge-base" equivalent were only to see
 117    if one commit fast-forwards to the other, which did not need the
 118    full set of merge bases to be computed. They have been updated to
 119    use less expensive checks.
 120
 121  * The heuristics to detect and silently convert latin1 to utf8 when
 122    we were told to use utf-8 in the log message has been transplanted
 123    from "mailinfo" to "commit" and "commit-tree".
 124
 125  * Messages given by "git <subcommand> -h" from many subcommands have
 126    been marked for translation.
 127
 128
 129 Also contains minor documentation updates and code clean-ups.
 130
 131
 132 Fixes since v1.7.12
 133 -------------------
 134
 135 Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.7.12 in the
 136 maintenance track are contained in this release (see release notes
 137 to them for details).
 138
 139  * The attribute system may be asked for a path that itself or its
 140    leading directories no longer exists in the working tree, and it is
 141    fine if we cannot open .gitattribute file in such a case.  Failure
 142    to open per-directory .gitattributes with error status other than
 143    ENOENT and ENOTDIR should be diagnosed, but it wasn't.
 144
 145  * When looking for $HOME/.gitconfig etc., it is OK if we cannot read
 146    them because they do not exist, but we did not diagnose existing
 147    files that we cannot read.
 148
 149  * When "git am" is fed an input that has multiple "Content-type: ..."
 150    header, it did not grok charset= attribute correctly.
 151
 152  * "git blame MAKEFILE" run in a history that has "Makefile" but not
 153    "MAKEFILE" should say "No such file MAKEFILE in HEAD", but got
 154    confused on a case insensitive filesystem and failed to do so.
 155
 156  * Even during a conflicted merge, "git blame $path" always meant to
 157    blame uncommitted changes to the "working tree" version; make it
 158    more useful by showing cleanly merged parts as coming from the other
 159    branch that is being merged.
 160
 161  * It was unclear in the documentation for "git blame" that it is
 162    unnecessary for users to use the "--follow" option.
 163    (merge e5dce96 jc/blame-follows-renames later to maint).
 164
 165  * Output from "git branch -v" contains "(no branch)" that could be
 166    localized, but the code to align it along with the names of
 167    branches were counting in bytes, not in display columns.
 168
 169  * "git cherry-pick A C B" used to replay changes in A and then B and
 170    then C if these three commits had committer timestamps in that
 171    order, which is not what the user who said "A C B" naturally
 172    expects.
 173
 174  * A repository created with "git clone --single" had its fetch
 175    refspecs set up just like a clone without "--single", leading the
 176    subsequent "git fetch" to slurp all the other branches, defeating
 177    the whole point of specifying "only this branch".
 178    (merge 31b808a rt/maint-clone-single later to maint).
 179
 180  * Documentation talked about "first line of commit log" when it meant
 181    the title of the commit.  The description was clarified by defining
 182    how the title is decided and rewording the casual mention of "first
 183    line" to "title".
 184
 185  * "git cvsimport" did not thoroughly cleanse tag names that it
 186    inferred from the names of the tags it obtained from CVS, which
 187    caused "git tag" to barf and stop the import in the middle.
 188
 189  * Earlier we made the diffstat summary line that shows the number of
 190    lines added/deleted localizable, but it was found irritating having
 191    to see them in various languages on a list whose discussion language
 192    is English.
 193
 194  * "git fetch --all", when passed "--no-tags", did not honor the
 195    "--no-tags" option while fetching from individual remotes (the same
 196    issue existed with "--tags", but combination "--all --tags" makes
 197    much less sense than "--all --no-tags").
 198
 199  * "git fetch" over http had an old workaround for an unlikely server
 200    misconfiguration; it turns out that this hurts debuggability of the
 201    configuration in general, and has been reverted.
 202    (merge 6ac964a sp/maint-http-info-refs-no-retry later to maint).
 203
 204  * "git fetch" over http advertised that it supports "deflate", which
 205    is much less common, and did not advertise more common "gzip" on
 206    its Accept-Encoding header.
 207    (merge aa90b96 sp/maint-http-enable-gzip later to maint).
 208
 209  * After "gitk" showed the contents of a tag, neither "Reread
 210    references" nor "Reload" did not update what is shown as the
 211    contents of it, when the user overwrote the tag with "git tag -f".
 212
 213  * "git log --all-match --grep=A --grep=B" ought to show commits that
 214    mention both A and B, but when these three options are used with
 215    --author or --committer, it showed commits that mention either A or
 216    B (or both) instead.
 217
 218  * "git p4", when "--use-client-spec" and "--detect-branches" are used
 219    together, misdetected branches.
 220
 221  * "git receive-pack" (the counterpart to "git push") did not give
 222    progress output while processing objects it received to the puser
 223    when run over the smart-http protocol.
 224    (merge 74eb32d jk/receive-pack-unpack-error-to-pusher later to maint).
 225
 226  * When you misspell the command name you give to the "exec" action in
 227    the "git rebase -i" insn sheet, you are told that 'rebase' is not a
 228    git subcommand from "git rebase --continue".
 229
 230  * The subcommand in "git remote" to remove a defined remote was
 231    "rm" and the command did not take a fully-spelled "remove".
 232
 233  * The interactive prompt "git send-email" gives was error prone. It
 234    asked "What e-mail address do you want to use?" with the address it
 235    guessed (correctly) the user would want to use in its prompt,
 236    tempting the user to say "y". But the response was taken as "No,
 237    please use 'y' as the e-mail address instead", which is most
 238    certainly not what the user meant.
 239
 240  * "git show --format='%ci'" did not give timestamp correctly for
 241    commits created without human readable name on "committer" line.
 242
 243  * "git show --quiet" ought to be a synonym for "git show -s", but
 244    wasn't.
 245
 246  * "git submodule frotz" was not diagnosed as "frotz" being an unknown
 247    subcommand to "git submodule"; the user instead got a complaint
 248    that "git submodule status" was run with an unknown path "frotz".
 249    (merge af9c9f9 rr/maint-submodule-unknown-cmd later to maint).
 250
 251  * "git status" honored the ignore=dirty settings in .gitmodules but
 252    "git commit" didn't.
 253    (merge 8f6811e os/commit-submodule-ignore later to maint).