Documentation/RelNotes/1.8.0.txt

Git v1.8.0 Release Notes
========================

Backward compatibility notes
----------------------------

In the next major release, we will change the behaviour of the "git
push" command.  When "git push [$there]" does not say what to push, we
have used the traditional "matching" semantics (all your branches were
sent to the remote as long as there already are branches of the same
name over there).  We will use the "simple" semantics, that pushes the
current branch to the branch with the same name only when the current
branch is set to integrate with that remote branch.  There is a user
preference configuration variable "push.default" to change this, and
"git push" will warn about the upcoming change until you set this
variable.

"git branch --set-upstream" is deprecated and may be removed in a
relatively distant future.  "git branch [-u|--set-upstream-to]" has
been introduced with a saner order of arguments.


Updates since v1.7.12
---------------------

UI, Workflows & Features

 * A credential helper for Win32 to allow access to the keychain of
   the logged-in user has been added.

 * A credential helper to allow access to the Gnome keyring has been
   added.

 * It was tempting to say "git branch --set-upstream origin/master",
   but that tells Git to arrange the local branch "origin/master" to
   integrate with the currently checked out branch, which is highly
   unlikely what the user meant.  The option is deprecated; use the
   new "--set-upstream-to" (with a short-and-sweet "-u") option
   instead.

 * "git cherry-pick" learned the "--allow-empty-message" option to
   allow it to replay a commit without any log message.

 * "git daemon" learned the "--access-hook" option to allow an
   external command to decline service based on the client address,
   repository path, etc.

 * "git difftool --dir-diff" learned to use symbolic links to prepare
   temporary copy of the working tree when available.

 * "git grep" learned to use a non-standard pattern type by default if
   a configuration variable tells it to.

 * "git merge-base" learned "--is-ancestor A B" option to tell if A is
   an ancestor of B.  The result is indicated by its exit status code.


Foreign Interface

 * "git svn" has been updated to work with SVN 1.7.


Performance, Internal Implementation, etc. (please report possible regressions)

 * Git ships with a fall-back regexp implementation for platforms with
   buggy regexp library, but it was easy for people to keep using their
   platform regexp.  A new test has been added to check this.

 * The "check-docs" build target has been updated and greatly
   simplified.

 * The documentation in the TeXinfo format was using indented output
   for materials meant to be examples that are better typeset in
   monospace.

 * Compatibility wrapper around some mkdir(2) implementations that
   reject parameter with trailing slash has been introduced.

 * Compatibility wrapper for systems that lack usable setitimer() has
   been added.

 * Many internal uses of "git merge-base" equivalent were only to see
   if one commit fast-forwards to the other, which did not need the
   full set of merge bases to be computed. They have been updated to
   use less expensive checks.

 * The heuristics to detect and silently convert latin1 to utf8 when
   we were told to use utf-8 in the log message has been transplanted
   from "mailinfo" to "commit" and "commit-tree".

 * Messages given by "git <subcommand> -h" from many subcommands have
   been marked for translation.


Also contains minor documentation updates and code clean-ups.


Fixes since v1.7.12
-------------------

Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.7.12 in the
maintenance track are contained in this release (see release notes
to them for details).

 * The subcommand in "git remote" to remove a defined remote was
   "rm" and the command did not take a fully-spelled "remove".
   (merge e17dba8 nd/maint-remote-remove later to maint).

 * After "gitk" showed the contents of a tag, neither "Reread
   references" nor "Reload" did not update what is shown as the
   contents of it, when the user overwrote the tag with "git tag -f".

 * "git cvsimport" did not thoroughly cleanse tag names that it
   inferred from the names of the tags it obtained from CVS, which
   caused "git tag" to barf and stop the import in the middle.

 * "git show --format='%ci'" did not give timestamp correctly for
   commits created without human readable name on "committer" line.
   (merge e27ddb6 jc/maint-ident-missing-human-name later to maint).

 * "git cherry-pick A C B" used to replay changes in A and then B and
   then C if these three commits had committer timestamps in that
   order, which is not what the user who said "A C B" naturally
   expects.
   (merge a73e22e mz/cherry-pick-cmdline-order later to maint).

 * "git show --quiet" ought to be a synonym for "git show -s", but
   wasn't.
   (merge f9c75d8 jk/maint-quiet-is-synonym-to-s-in-log later to maint).

 * "git p4", when "--use-client-spec" and "--detect-branches" are used
   together, misdetected branches.
   (merge 21ef5df pw/p4-use-client-spec-branch-detection later to maint).

 * Output from "git branch -v" contains "(no branch)" that could be
   localized, but the code to align it along with the names of
   branches were counting in bytes, not in display columns.
   (merge 1452bd6 nd/branch-v-alignment later to maint).

 * When looking for $HOME/.gitconfig etc., it is OK if we cannot read
   them because they do not exist, but we did not diagnose existing
   files that we cannot read.

 * The interactive prompt "git send-email" gives was error prone. It
   asked "What e-mail address do you want to use?" with the address it
   guessed (correctly) the user would want to use in its prompt,
   tempting the user to say "y". But the response was taken as "No,
   please use 'y' as the e-mail address instead", which is most
   certainly not what the user meant.
   (merge 6183749 sb/send-email-reconfirm-fix later to maint).