Documentation/RelNotes/2.43.0.txt

Git v2.43 Release Notes
=======================

Backward Compatibility Notes

 * The "--rfc" option of "git format-patch" used to be a valid way to
   override an earlier "--subject-prefix=<something>" on the command
   line and replace it with "[RFC PATCH]", but from this release, it
   merely prefixes the string "RFC " in front of the given subject
   prefix.  If you are negatively affected by this change, please use
   "--subject-prefix=PATCH --rfc" as a replacement.

 * "git rev-list --stdin" learned to take non-revisions (like "--not")
   recently from the standard input, but the way such a "--not" was
   handled was quite confusing, which has been rethought.  The updated
   rule is that "--not" given from the command line only affects revs
   given from the command line that comes but not revs read from the
   standard input, and "--not" read from the standard input affects
   revs given from the standard input and not revs given from the
   command line.

UI, Workflows & Features

 * A message written in olden time prevented a branch from getting
   checked out saying it is already checked out elsewhere, but these
   days, we treat a branch that is being bisected or rebased just like
   a branch that is checked out and protect it.  Rephrase the message
   to say that the branch is in use.

 * Hourly and other schedule of "git maintenance" jobs are randomly
   distributed now.

 * "git cmd -h" learned to signal which options can be negated by
   listing such options like "--[no-]opt".

 * The way authentication related data other than passwords (e.g.
   oath token and password expiration data) are stored in libsecret
   keyrings has been rethought.

 * Update the libsecret and wincred credential helpers to correctly
   match which credential to erase; they erased the wrong entry in
   some cases.

 * Git GUI updates.

 * "git format-patch" learns a way to feed cover letter description,
   that (1) can be used on detached HEAD where there is no branch
   description available, and (2) also can override the branch
   description if there is one.

 * Use of --max-pack-size to allow multiple packfiles to be created is
   now supported even when we are sending unreachable objects to cruft
   packs.

 * "git format-patch --rfc --subject-prefix=<foo>" used to ignore the
   "--subject-prefix" option and used "[RFC PATCH]"; now we will add
   "RFC" prefix to whatever subject prefix is specified.

 * "git log --format" has been taught the %(decorate) placeholder.

 * The default log message created by "git revert", when reverting a
   commit that records a revert, has been tweaked, to encourage people
   describe complex "revert of revert of revert" situation better in
   their own words.

 * The command-line completion support (in contrib/) learned to
   complete "git commit --trailer=" for possible trailer keys.

 * "git update-index" learns "--show-index-version" to inspect
   the index format version used by the on-disk index file.

 * "git diff" learned diff.statNameWidth configuration variable, to
   give the default width for the name part in the "--stat" output.

 * "git range-diff --notes=foo" compared "log --notes=foo --notes" of
   the two ranges, instead of using just the specified notes tree.

 * The command line completion script (in contrib/) can be told to
   complete aliases by including ": git <cmd> ;" in the alias to tell
   it that the alias should be completed similar to how "git <cmd>" is
   completed.  The parsing code for the alias as been loosened to
   allow ';' without an extra space before it.

 * "git for-each-ref" and friends learned to apply mailmap to
   authorname and other fields.

 * "git repack" machinery learns to pay attention to the "--filter="
   option.

 * "git repack" learned "--max-cruft-size" to prevent cruft packs from
   growing without bounds.

 * "git merge-tree" learned to take strategy backend specific options
   via the "-X" option, like "git merge" does.

 * "git log" and friends learned "--dd" that is a short-hand for
   "--diff-merges=first-parent -p".

 * The attribute subsystem learned to honor `attr.tree` configuration
   that specifies which tree to read the .gitattributes files from.


Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc.

 * "git check-attr" has been taught to work better with sparse-index.

 * It may be tempting to leave the help text NULL for a command line
   option that is either hidden or too obvious, but "git subcmd -h"
   and "git subcmd --help-all" would have segfaulted if done so.  Now
   the help text is optional.

 * Tests that are known to pass with LSan are now marked as such.

 * Flaky "git p4" tests, as well as "git svn" tests, are now skipped
   in the (rather expensive) sanitizer CI job.

 * Tests with LSan from time to time seem to emit harmless message
   that makes our tests unnecessarily flaky; we work it around by
   filtering the uninteresting output.

 * Unused parameters to functions are marked as such, and/or removed,
   in order to bring us closer to -Wunused-parameter clean.

 * The code to keep track of existing packs in the repository while
   repacking has been refactored.

 * The "streaming" interface used for bulk-checkin codepath has been
   narrowed to take only blob objects for now, with no real loss of
   functionality.

 * GitHub CI workflow has learned to trigger Coverity check.

 * Test coverage for trailers has been improved.

 * The code to iterate over loose references have been optimized to
   reduce the number of lstat() system calls.
   (merge 2cdb796101 vd/loose-ref-iteration-optimization later to maint).

 * The codepaths that read "chunk" formatted files have been corrected
   to pay attention to the chunk size and notice broken files.


Fixes since v2.42
-----------------

 * Overly long label names used in the sequencer machinery are now
   chopped to fit under filesystem limitation.

 * Scalar updates.

 * Tweak GitHub Actions CI so that pushing the same commit to multiple
   branch tips at the same time will not waste building and testing
   the same thing twice.

 * The commit-graph verification code that detects mixture of zero and
   non-zero generation numbers has been updated.

 * "git diff -w --exit-code" with various options did not work
   correctly, which is being addressed.

 * transfer.unpackLimit ought to be used as a fallback, but overrode
   fetch.unpackLimit and receive.unpackLimit instead.

 * The use of API between two calls to require_clean_work_tree() from
   the sequencer code has been cleaned up for consistency.

 * "git diff --no-such-option" and other corner cases around the exit
   status of the "diff" command has been corrected.

 * "git for-each-ref --sort='contents:size'" sorts the refs according
   to size numerically, giving a ref that points at a blob twelve-byte
   (12) long before showing a blob hundred-byte (100) long.

 * We now limit depth of the tree objects and maximum length of
   pathnames recorded in tree objects.
   (merge 4d5693ba05 jk/tree-name-and-depth-limit later to maint).

 * Various fixes to the behavior of "rebase -i" when the command got
   interrupted by conflicting changes.

 * References from description of the `--patch` option in various
   manual pages have been simplified and improved.

 * "git grep -e A --no-or -e B" is accepted, even though the negation
   of "or" did not mean anything, which has been tightened.

 * The completion script (in contrib/) has been taught to treat the
   "-t" option to "git checkout" and "git switch" just like the
   "--track" option, to complete remote-tracking branches.

 * "git diff --no-index -R <(one) <(two)" did not work correctly,
   which has been corrected.

 * Update "git maintenance" timers' implementation based on systemd
   timers to work with WSL.

 * "git diff --cached" codepath did not fill the necessary stat
   information for a file when fsmonitor knows it is clean and ended
   up behaving as if it is not clean, which has been corrected.

 * Clarify how "alias.foo = : git cmd ; aliased-command-string" should
   be spelled with necessary whitespaces around punctuation marks to
   work.

 * HTTP Header redaction code has been adjusted for a newer version of
   cURL library that shows its traces differently from earlier
   versions.

 * An error message given by "git send-email" when given a malformed
   address did not give correct information, which has been corrected.

 * UBSan options were not propagated through the test framework to git
   run via the httpd, unlike ASan options, which has been corrected.

 * "checkout --merge -- path" and "update-index --unresolve path" did
   not resurrect conflicted state that was resolved to remove path,
   but now they do.
   (merge 5bdedac3c7 jc/unresolve-removal later to maint).

 * The display width table for unicode characters has been updated for
   Unicode 15.1
   (merge 872976c37e bb/unicode-width-table-15 later to maint).

 * Update mailmap entry for Derrick.
   (merge 6e5457d8c7 ds/mailmap-entry-update later to maint).

 * In .gitmodules files, submodules are keyed by their names, and the
   path to the submodule whose name is $name is specified by the
   submodule.$name.path variable.  There were a few codepaths that
   mixed the name and path up when consulting the submodule database,
   which have been corrected.  It took long for these bugs to be found
   as the name of a submodule initially is the same as its path, and
   the problem does not surface until it is moved to a different path,
   which apparently happens very rarely.

 * "git diff --merge-base X other args..." insisted that X must be a
   commit and errored out when given an annotated tag that peels to a
   commit, but we only need it to be a committish.  This has been
   corrected.
   (merge 4adceb5a29 ar/diff-index-merge-base-fix later to maint).

 * Fix "git merge-tree" to stop segfaulting when the --attr-source
   option is used.
   (merge e95bafc52f jc/merge-ort-attr-index-fix later to maint).

 * Unlike "git log --pretty=%D", "git log --pretty="%(decorate)" did
   not auto-initialize the decoration subsystem, which has been
   corrected.

 * Feeding "git stash store" with a random commit that was not created
   by "git stash create" now errors out.
   (merge d9b6634589 jc/fail-stash-to-store-non-stash later to maint).

 * The index file has room only for lower 32-bit of the file size in
   the cached stat information, which means cached stat information
   will have 0 in its sd_size member for a file whose size is multiple
   of 4GiB.  This is mistaken for a racily clean path.  Avoid it by
   storing a bogus sd_size value instead for such files.
   (merge 5143ac07b1 bc/racy-4gb-files later to maint).

 * "git p4" tried to store symlinks to LFS when told, but has been
   fixed not to do so, because it does not make sense.
   (merge 10c89a02b0 mm/p4-symlink-with-lfs later to maint).

 * The codepath to handle recipient addresses `git send-email
   --compose` learns from the user was completely broken, which has
   been corrected.
   (merge 3ec6167567 jk/send-email-fix-addresses-from-composed-messages later to maint).

 * "cd sub && git grep -f patterns" tried to read "patterns" file at
   the top level of the working tree; it has been corrected to read
   "sub/patterns" instead.


 * "git reflog expire --single-worktree" has been broken for the past
   20 months or so, which has been corrected.

 * "git send-email" did not have certain pieces of data computed yet
   when it tried to validate the outging messages and its recipient
   addresses, which has been sorted out.

 * "git bugreport" learned to complain when it received a command line
   argument that it will not use.

 * Other code cleanup, docfix, build fix, etc.
   (merge c2c349a15c xz/commit-title-soft-limit-doc later to maint).