Documentation/RelNotes/1.6.6.txt

   1 Git v1.6.6 Release Notes
   2 ========================
   3
   4 Notes on behaviour change
   5 -------------------------
   6
   7  * In this release, "git fsck" defaults to "git fsck --full" and
   8    checks packfiles, and because of this it will take much longer to
   9    complete than before.  If you prefer a quicker check only on loose
  10    objects (the old default), you can say "git fsck --no-full".  This
  11    has been supported by 1.5.4 and newer versions of git, so it is
  12    safe to write it in your script even if you use slightly older git
  13    on some of your machines.
  14
  15 Preparing yourselves for compatibility issues in 1.7.0
  16 ------------------------------------------------------
  17
  18 In git 1.7.0, which is planned to be the release after 1.6.6, there will
  19 be a handful of behaviour changes that will break backward compatibility.
  20
  21 These changes were discussed long time ago and existing behaviours have
  22 been identified as more problematic to the userbase than keeping them for
  23 the sake of backward compatibility.
  24
  25 When necessary, a transition strategy for existing users has been designed
  26 not to force them running around setting configuration variables and
  27 updating their scripts in order to either keep the traditional behaviour
  28 or adjust to the new behaviour, on the day their sysadmin decides to install
  29 the new version of git.  When we switched from "git-foo" to "git foo" in
  30 1.6.0, even though the change had been advertised and the transition
  31 guide had been provided for a very long time, the users procrastinated
  32 during the entire transition period, and ended up panicking on the day
  33 their sysadmins updated their git installation.  We are trying to avoid
  34 repeating that unpleasantness in the 1.7.0 release.
  35
  36 For changes decided to be in 1.7.0, commands that will be affected
  37 have been much louder to strongly discourage such procrastination, and
  38 they continue to be in this release.  If you have been using recent
  39 versions of git, you would have seen warnings issued when you used
  40 features whose behaviour will change, with a clear instruction on how
  41 to keep the existing behaviour if you want to.  You hopefully are
  42 already well prepared.
  43
  44 Of course, we have also been giving "this and that will change in
  45 1.7.0; prepare yourselves" warnings in the release notes and
  46 announcement messages for the past few releases.  Let's see how well
  47 users will fare this time.
  48
  49  * "git push" into a branch that is currently checked out (i.e. pointed by
  50    HEAD in a repository that is not bare) will be refused by default.
  51
  52    Similarly, "git push $there :$killed" to delete the branch $killed
  53    in a remote repository $there, when $killed branch is the current
  54    branch pointed at by its HEAD, will be refused by default.
  55
  56    Setting the configuration variables receive.denyCurrentBranch and
  57    receive.denyDeleteCurrent to 'ignore' in the receiving repository
  58    can be used to override these safety features.  Versions of git
  59    since 1.6.2 have issued a loud warning when you tried to do these
  60    operations without setting the configuration, so repositories of
  61    people who still need to be able to perform such a push should
  62    already have been future proofed.
  63
  64    Please refer to:
  65
  66    http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitFaq#non-bare
  67    http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/107758/focus=108007
  68
  69    for more details on the reason why this change is needed and the
  70    transition process that already took place so far.
  71
  72  * "git send-email" will not make deep threads by default when sending a
  73    patch series with more than two messages.  All messages will be sent
  74    as a reply to the first message, i.e. cover letter.  Git 1.6.6 (this
  75    release) will issue a warning about the upcoming default change, when
  76    it uses the traditional "deep threading" behaviour as the built-in
  77    default.  To squelch the warning but still use the "deep threading"
  78    behaviour, give --chain-reply-to option or set sendemail.chainreplyto
  79    to true.
  80
  81    It has been possible to configure send-email to send "shallow thread"
  82    by setting sendemail.chainreplyto configuration variable to false.
  83    The only thing 1.7.0 release will do is to change the default when
  84    you haven't configured that variable.
  85
  86  * "git status" will not be "git commit --dry-run".  This change does not
  87    affect you if you run the command without pathspec.
  88
  89    Nobody sane found the current behaviour of "git status Makefile" useful
  90    nor meaningful, and it confused users.  "git commit --dry-run" has been
  91    provided as a way to get the current behaviour of this command since
  92    1.6.5.
  93
  94  * "git diff" traditionally treated various "ignore whitespace" options
  95    only as a way to filter the patch output.  "git diff --exit-code -b"
  96    exited with non-zero status even if all changes were about changing the
  97    amount of whitespace and nothing else.  and "git diff -b" showed the
  98    "diff --git" header line for such a change without patch text.
  99
 100    In 1.7.0, the "ignore whitespaces" will affect the semantics of the
 101    diff operation itself.  A change that does not affect anything but
 102    whitespaces will be reported with zero exit status when run with
 103    --exit-code, and there will not be "diff --git" header for such a
 104    change.
 105
 106
 107 Updates since v1.6.5
 108 --------------------
 109
 110 (subsystems)
 111
 112  * various gitk updates including use of themed widgets under Tk 8.5,
 113    Japanese translation, a fix to a bug when running "gui blame" from
 114    a subdirectory, etc.
 115
 116  * various git-gui updates including new translations, wm states fixes,
 117    Tk bug workaround after quitting, improved heuristics to trigger gc,
 118    etc.
 119
 120  * various git-svn updates.
 121
 122  * "git fetch" over http learned a new mode that is different from the
 123    traditional "dumb commit walker".
 124
 125 (portability)
 126
 127  * imap-send can be built on mingw port.
 128
 129 (performance)
 130
 131  * "git diff -B" has smaller memory footprint.
 132
 133 (usability, bells and whistles)
 134
 135  * The object replace mechanism can be bypassed with --no-replace-objects
 136    global option given to the "git" program.
 137
 138  * In configuration files, a few variables that name paths can begin with ~/
 139    and ~username/ and they are expanded as expected.
 140
 141  * "git subcmd -h" now shows short usage help for many more subcommands.
 142
 143  * "git bisect reset" can reset to an arbitrary commit.
 144
 145  * "git checkout frotz" when there is no local branch "frotz" but there
 146    is only one remote tracking branch "frotz" is taken as a request to
 147    start the named branch at the corresponding remote tracking branch.
 148
 149  * "git commit -c/-C/--amend" can be told with a new "--reset-author" option
 150    to ignore authorship information in the commit it is taking the message
 151    from.
 152
 153  * "git describe" can be told to add "-dirty" suffix with "--dirty" option.
 154
 155  * "git diff" learned --submodule option to show a list of one-line logs
 156    instead of differences between the commit object names.
 157
 158  * "git diff" learned to honor diff.color.func configuration to paint
 159    function name hint printed on the hunk header "@@ -j,k +l,m @@" line
 160    in the specified color.
 161
 162  * "git fetch" learned --all and --multiple options, to run fetch from
 163    many repositories, and --prune option to remove remote tracking
 164    branches that went stale.  These make "git remote update" and "git
 165    remote prune" less necessary (there is no plan to remove "remote
 166    update" nor "remote prune", though).
 167
 168  * "git fsck" by default checks the packfiles (i.e. "--full" is the
 169    default); you can turn it off with "git fsck --no-full".
 170
 171  * "git grep" can use -F (fixed strings) and -i (ignore case) together.
 172
 173  * import-tars contributed fast-import frontend learned more types of
 174    compressed tarballs.
 175
 176  * "git instaweb" knows how to talk with mod_cgid to apache2.
 177
 178  * "git log --decorate" shows the location of HEAD as well.
 179
 180  * "git log" and "git rev-list" learned to take revs and pathspecs from
 181    the standard input with the new "--stdin" option.
 182
 183  * "--pretty=format" option to "log" family of commands learned:
 184
 185    . to wrap text with the "%w()" specifier.
 186    . to show reflog information with "%g[sdD]" specifier.
 187
 188  * "git notes" command to annotate existing commits.
 189
 190  * "git merge" (and "git pull") learned --ff-only option to make it fail
 191    if the merge does not result in a fast-forward.
 192
 193  * "git mergetool" learned to use p4merge.
 194
 195  * "git rebase -i" learned "reword" that acts like "edit" but immediately
 196    starts an editor to tweak the log message without returning control to
 197    the shell, which is done by "edit" to give an opportunity to tweak the
 198    contents.
 199
 200  * "git send-email" can be told with "--envelope-sender=auto" to use the
 201    same address as "From:" address as the envelope sender address.
 202
 203  * "git send-email" will issue a warning when it defaults to the
 204    --chain-reply-to behaviour without being told by the user and
 205    instructs to prepare for the change of the default in 1.7.0 release.
 206
 207  * In "git submodule add <repository> <path>", <path> is now optional and
 208    inferred from <repository> the same way "git clone <repository>" does.
 209
 210  * "git svn" learned to read SVN 1.5+ and SVK merge tickets.
 211
 212  * "git svn" learned to recreate empty directories tracked only by SVN.
 213
 214  * "gitweb" can optionally render its "blame" output incrementally (this
 215    requires JavaScript on the client side).
 216
 217  * Author names shown in gitweb output are links to search commits by the
 218    author.
 219
 220 Fixes since v1.6.5
 221 ------------------
 222
 223 All of the fixes in v1.6.5.X maintenance series are included in this
 224 release, unless otherwise noted.