+ * The ref subsystem and the worktree API have been refactored to pass a
+ repository pointer down the call chain, allowing them to drop
+ references to the global 'the_repository' variable. As part of this,
+ the handling of the 'core.packedRefsTimeout' configuration has been
+ moved into the per-repository ref store structure.
+
+ * 'git branch --contains' and 'git for-each-ref --contains' have been
+ optimized to use the memoized commit traversal previously used only by
+ 'git tag --contains', significantly speeding up connectivity checks
+ across many candidate refs with shared history.
+
+ * The passing of push destination specifications in the 'remote-curl'
+ helper has been simplified by removing the explicit 'count' parameter
+ and relying on the NULL-termination of the array.
+
+ * The dependency on the global 'the_repository' variable in the
+ 'refspec.c' API has been removed by passing the hash algorithm
+ explicitly to refspec-parsing functions and storing it in 'struct
+ refspec'.
+
+ * The enumeration of untracked and ignored files in 'git status' has
+ been optimized by avoiding quadratic complexity when inserting into
+ string lists, reducing the construction cost from O(n^2) to O(n log
+ n).
+
+ * The copy_file() and copy_file_with_time() functions have been
+ refactored to take a repository parameter, allowing the removal of the
+ implicit dependency on the global 'the_repository' variable in
+ 'copy.c'.
+