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 (not *this* one), we will change the
   8 behavior of the "git push" command.
   9
  10 When "git push [$there]" does not say what to push, we have used the
  11 traditional "matching" semantics so far (all your branches were sent
  12 to the remote as long as there already are branches of the same name
  13 over there).  We will use the "simple" semantics that pushes the
  14 current branch to the branch with the same name, only when the current
  15 branch is set to integrate with that remote branch.  There is a user
  16 preference configuration variable "push.default" to change this, and
  17 "git push" will warn about the upcoming change until you set this
  18 variable in this release.
  19
  20 "git branch --set-upstream" is deprecated and may be removed in a
  21 relatively distant future.  "git branch [-u|--set-upstream-to]" has
  22 been introduced with a saner order of arguments.
  23
  24
  25 Updates since v1.7.12
  26 ---------------------
  27
  28 UI, Workflows & Features
  29
  30  * A credential helper for Win32 to allow access to the keychain of
  31    the logged-in user has been added.
  32
  33  * An initial port to HP NonStop.
  34
  35  * A credential helper to allow access to the Gnome keyring has been
  36    added.
  37
  38  * When "git am" sanitizes the "Subject:" line, we strip the prefix from
  39    "Re: subject" and also from a less common "re: subject", but left
  40    the even less common "RE: subject" intact.  Now we strip that too.
  41
  42  * It was tempting to say "git branch --set-upstream origin/master",
  43    but that tells Git to arrange the local branch "origin/master" to
  44    integrate with the currently checked out branch, which is highly
  45    unlikely what the user meant.  The option is deprecated; use the
  46    new "--set-upstream-to" (with a short-and-sweet "-u") option
  47    instead.
  48
  49  * "git cherry-pick" learned the "--allow-empty-message" option to
  50    allow it to replay a commit without any log message.
  51
  52  * After "git cherry-pick -s" gave control back to the user asking
  53    help to resolve conflicts, concluding "git commit" used to need to
  54    be run with "-s" if the user wants to sign it off; now the command
  55    leaves the sign-off line in the log template.
  56
  57  * "git daemon" learned the "--access-hook" option to allow an
  58    external command to decline service based on the client address,
  59    repository path, etc.
  60
  61  * "git difftool --dir-diff" learned to use symbolic links to prepare
  62    a temporary copy of the working tree when available.
  63
  64  * "git grep" learned to use a non-standard pattern type by default if
  65    a configuration variable tells it to.
  66
  67  * Accumulated updates to "git gui" has been merged.
  68
  69  * "git log -g" learned the "--grep-reflog=<pattern>" option to limit
  70    its output to commits with a reflog message that matches the given
  71    pattern.
  72
  73  * "git merge-base" learned the "--is-ancestor A B" option to tell if A is
  74    an ancestor of B.  The result is indicated by its exit status code.
  75
  76  * "git mergetool" now allows users to override the actual command used
  77    with the mergetool.$name.cmd configuration variable even for built-in
  78    mergetool backends.
  79
  80  * "git rebase -i" learned the "--edit-todo" option to open an editor
  81    to edit the instruction sheet.
  82
  83
  84 Foreign Interface
  85
  86  * "git svn" has been updated to work with SVN 1.7.
  87
  88  * "git p4" learned the "--conflicts" option to specify what to do when
  89    encountering a conflict during "p4 submit".
  90
  91
  92 Performance, Internal Implementation, etc.
  93
  94  * Git ships with a fall-back regexp implementation for platforms with
  95    buggy regexp library, but it was easy for people to keep using their
  96    platform regexp by mistake.  A new test has been added to check this.
  97
  98  * The "check-docs" build target has been updated and greatly
  99    simplified.
 100
 101  * The test suite is run under MALLOC_CHECK_ when running with a glibc
 102    that supports the feature.
 103
 104  * The documentation in the TeXinfo format was using indented output
 105    for materials meant to be examples that are better typeset in
 106    monospace.
 107
 108  * Compatibility wrapper around some mkdir(2) implementations that
 109    reject parameters with trailing slash has been introduced.
 110
 111  * Compatibility wrapper for systems that lack usable setitimer() has
 112    been added.
 113
 114  * The option parsing of "git checkout" had error checking, dwim and
 115    defaulting missing options, all mixed in the code, and issuing an
 116    appropriate error message with useful context was getting harder.
 117    The code has been reorganized to allow giving a proper diagnosis
 118    when the user says "git checkout -b -t foo bar" (e.g. "-t" is not a
 119    good name for a branch).
 120
 121  * Many internal uses of a "git merge-base" equivalent were only to see
 122    if one commit fast-forwards to the other, which did not need the
 123    full set of merge bases to be computed. They have been updated to
 124    use less expensive checks.
 125
 126  * The heuristics to detect and silently convert latin1 to utf8 when
 127    we were told to use utf-8 in the log message has been transplanted
 128    from "mailinfo" to "commit" and "commit-tree".
 129
 130  * Messages given by "git <subcommand> -h" from many subcommands have
 131    been marked for translation.
 132
 133
 134 Also contains minor documentation updates and code clean-ups.
 135
 136
 137 Fixes since v1.7.12
 138 -------------------
 139
 140 Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.7.12 in the
 141 maintenance track are contained in this release (see release notes
 142 to them for details).
 143
 144  * The attribute system may be asked for a path that itself or its
 145    leading directories no longer exists in the working tree, and it is
 146    fine if we cannot open .gitattribute file in such a case.  Failure
 147    to open per-directory .gitattributes with error status other than
 148    ENOENT and ENOTDIR should be diagnosed, but it wasn't.
 149
 150  * When looking for $HOME/.gitconfig etc., it is OK if we cannot read
 151    them because they do not exist, but we did not diagnose existing
 152    files that we cannot read.
 153
 154  * When "git am" is fed an input that has multiple "Content-type: ..."
 155    header, it did not grok charset= attribute correctly.
 156
 157  * "git am" mishandled a patch attached as application/octet-stream
 158    (e.g. not text/*); Content-Transfer-Encoding (e.g. base64) was not
 159    honored correctly.
 160
 161  * "git blame MAKEFILE" run in a history that has "Makefile" but not
 162    "MAKEFILE" should say "No such file MAKEFILE in HEAD", but got
 163    confused on a case insensitive filesystem and failed to do so.
 164
 165  * Even during a conflicted merge, "git blame $path" always meant to
 166    blame uncommitted changes to the "working tree" version; make it
 167    more useful by showing cleanly merged parts as coming from the other
 168    branch that is being merged.
 169
 170  * It was unclear in the documentation for "git blame" that it is
 171    unnecessary for users to use the "--follow" option.
 172
 173  * Output from "git branch -v" contains "(no branch)" that could be
 174    localized, but the code to align it along with the names of
 175    branches was counting in bytes, not in display columns.
 176
 177  * "git cherry-pick A C B" used to replay changes in A and then B and
 178    then C if these three commits had committer timestamps in that
 179    order, which is not what the user who said "A C B" naturally
 180    expects.
 181
 182  * A repository created with "git clone --single" had its fetch
 183    refspecs set up just like a clone without "--single", leading the
 184    subsequent "git fetch" to slurp all the other branches, defeating
 185    the whole point of specifying "only this branch".
 186
 187  * Documentation talked about "first line of commit log" when it meant
 188    the title of the commit.  The description was clarified by defining
 189    how the title is decided and rewording the casual mention of "first
 190    line" to "title".
 191
 192  * "git cvsimport" did not thoroughly cleanse tag names that it
 193    inferred from the names of the tags it obtained from CVS, which
 194    caused "git tag" to barf and stop the import in the middle.
 195
 196  * Earlier we made the diffstat summary line that shows the number of
 197    lines added/deleted localizable, but it was found irritating having
 198    to see them in various languages on a list whose discussion language
 199    is English, and this change has been reverted.
 200
 201  * "git fetch --all", when passed "--no-tags", did not honor the
 202    "--no-tags" option while fetching from individual remotes (the same
 203    issue existed with "--tags", but the combination "--all --tags" makes
 204    much less sense than "--all --no-tags").
 205
 206  * "git fetch" over http had an old workaround for an unlikely server
 207    misconfiguration; it turns out that this hurts debuggability of the
 208    configuration in general, and has been reverted.
 209
 210  * "git fetch" over http advertised that it supports "deflate", which
 211    is much less common, and did not advertise the more common "gzip" on
 212    its Accept-Encoding header.
 213
 214  * "git fetch" over the dumb-http revision walker could segfault when
 215    curl's multi interface was used.
 216
 217  * "git gc --auto" notified the user that auto-packing has triggered
 218     even under the "--quiet" option.
 219
 220  * After "gitk" showed the contents of a tag, neither "Reread
 221    references" nor "Reload" updated what is shown as the
 222    contents of it when the user overwrote the tag with "git tag -f".
 223
 224  * "git log --all-match --grep=A --grep=B" ought to show commits that
 225    mention both A and B, but when these three options are used with
 226    --author or --committer, it showed commits that mention either A or
 227    B (or both) instead.
 228
 229  * The "-Xours" backend option to "git merge -s recursive" was ignored
 230    for binary files.
 231
 232  * "git p4", when "--use-client-spec" and "--detect-branches" are used
 233    together, misdetected branches.
 234
 235  * "git receive-pack" (the counterpart to "git push") did not give
 236    progress output while processing objects it received to the user
 237    when run over the smart-http protocol.
 238
 239  * When you misspell the command name you give to the "exec" action in
 240    the "git rebase -i" instruction sheet you were told that 'rebase' is not a
 241    git subcommand from "git rebase --continue".
 242
 243  * The subcommand in "git remote" to remove a defined remote was
 244    "rm" and the command did not take a fully-spelled "remove".
 245
 246  * The interactive prompt that "git send-email" gives was error prone. It
 247    asked "What e-mail address do you want to use?" with the address it
 248    guessed (correctly) the user would want to use in its prompt,
 249    tempting the user to say "y". But the response was taken as "No,
 250    please use 'y' as the e-mail address instead", which is most
 251    certainly not what the user meant.
 252
 253  * "git show --format='%ci'" did not give the timestamp correctly for
 254    commits created without human readable name on the "committer" line.
 255
 256  * "git show --quiet" ought to be a synonym for "git show -s", but
 257    wasn't.
 258
 259  * "git submodule frotz" was not diagnosed as "frotz" being an unknown
 260    subcommand to "git submodule"; the user instead got a complaint
 261    that "git submodule status" was run with an unknown path "frotz".
 262
 263  * "git status" honored the ignore=dirty settings in .gitmodules but
 264    "git commit" didn't.
 265
 266  * "gitweb" did not give the correct committer timezone in its feed
 267    output due to a typo.