GIT v1.5.5 Release Notes
========================
Updates since v1.5.4
--------------------
(subsystems)
* Comes with git-gui 0.10.1
(portability)
* We shouldn't ask for BSD group ownership semantics by setting g+s bit
on directories on older BSD systems that refuses chmod() by non root
users. BSD semantics is the default there anyway.
* Bunch of portability improvement patches coming from an effort to port
to Solaris has been applied.
(performance)
* On platforms with suboptimal qsort(3) implementation, there
is an option to use more reasonable substitute we ship with
our software.
* New configuration variable "pack.packsizelimit" can be used
in place of command line option --max-pack-size.
* "git fetch" over the native git protocol used to make a
connection to find out the set of current remote refs and
another to actually download the pack data. We now use only
one connection for these tasks.
* "git commit" does not run lstat(2) more than necessary
anymore.
(usability, bells and whistles)
* Bash completion script (in contrib) are aware of more commands and
options.
* You can be warned when core.autocrlf conversion is applied in
such a way that results in an irreversible conversion.
* A catch-all "color.ui" configuration variable can be used to
enable coloring of all color-capable commands, instead of
individual ones such as "color.status" and "color.branch".
* The commands refused to take absolute pathnames where they
require pathnames relative to the work tree or the current
subdirectory. They now can take absolute pathnames in such a
case as long as the pathnames do not refer outside of the
work tree. E.g. "git add $(pwd)/foo" now works.
* Error messages used to be sent to stderr, only to get hidden,
when $PAGER was in use. They now are sent to stdout along
with the command output to be shown in the $PAGER.
* A pattern "foo/" in .gitignore file now matches a directory
"foo". Pattern "foo" also matches as before.
* bash completion's prompt helper function can talk about
operation in-progress (e.g. merge, rebase, etc.).
* Configuration variables "url.<usethis>.insteadof = <otherurl>" can be
used to tell "git-fetch" and "git-push" to use different URL than what
is given from the command line.
* "git add -i" behaves better even before you make an initial commit.
* "git am" refused to run from a subdirectory without a good reason.
* After "git apply --whitespace=fix" fixes whitespace errors in a patch,
a line before the fix can appear as a context or preimage line in a
later patch, causing the patch not to apply. The command now knows to
see through whitespace fixes done to context lines to successfully
apply such a patch series.
* "git branch" (and "git checkout -b") to branch from a local branch can
optionally set "branch.<name>.merge" to mark the new branch to build on
the other local branch, when "branch.autosetupmerge" is set to
"always", or when passing the command line option "--track" (this option
was ignored when branching from local branches). By default, this does
not happen when branching from a local branch.
* "git checkout" to switch to a branch that has "branch.<name>.merge" set
(i.e. marked to build on another branch) reports how much the branch
and the other branch diverged.
* When "git checkout" has to update a lot of paths, it used to be silent
for 4 seconds before it showed any progress report. It is now a bit
more impatient and starts showing progress report early.
* "git commit" learned a new hook "prepare-commit-msg" that can
inspect what is going to be committed and prepare the commit
log message template to be edited.
* "git cvsimport" can now take more than one -M options.
* "git describe" learned to limit the tags to be used for
naming with --match option.
* "git describe --contains" now barfs when the named commit
cannot be described.
* "git describe --exact-match" describes only commits that are tagged.
* "git describe --long" describes a tagged commit as $tag-0-$sha1,
instead of just showing the exact tagname.
* "git describe" warns when using a tag whose name and path contradict
with each other.
* "git diff" learned "--relative" option to limit and output paths
relative to the current directory when working in a subdirectory.
* "git diff" learned "--dirstat" option to show birds-eye-summary of
changes more concisely than "--diffstat".
* "git format-patch" learned --cover-letter option to generate a cover
letter template.
* "git gc" learned --quiet option.
* "git gc" now automatically prunes unreachable objects that are two
weeks old or older.
* "git gc --auto" can be disabled more easily by just setting gc.auto
to zero. It also tolerates more packfiles by default.
* "git grep" now knows "--name-only" is a synonym for the "-l" option.
* "git help <alias>" now reports "'git <alias>' is alias to <what>",
instead of saying "No manual entry for git-<alias>".
* "git help" can use different backends to show manual pages and this can
be configured using "man.viewer" configuration.
* "gitk" does not restore window position from $HOME/.gitk anymore (it
still restores the size).
* "git log --grep=<what>" learned "--fixed-strings" option to look for
<what> without treating it as a regular expression.
* "git gui" learned an auto-spell checking.
* "git push <somewhere> HEAD" and "git push <somewhere> +HEAD" works as
expected; they push the current branch (and only the current branch).
In addition, HEAD can be written as the value of "remote.<there>.push"
configuration variable.
* When the configuration variable "pack.threads" is set to 0, "git
repack" auto detects the number of CPUs and uses that many threads.
* "git send-email" learned to prompt for passwords
interactively.
* "git send-email" learned an easier way to suppress CC
recipients.
* "git stash" learned "pop" command, that applies the latest stash and
removes it from the stash, and "drop" command to discard the named
stash entry.
* "git submodule" learned a new subcommand "summary" to show the
symmetric difference between the HEAD version and the work tree version
of the submodule commits.
* Various "git cvsimport", "git cvsexportcommit", "git cvsserver",
"git svn" and "git p4" improvements.
(internal)
* Duplicated code between git-help and git-instaweb that
launches user's preferred browser has been refactored.
* It is now easier to write test scripts that records known
breakages.
* "git checkout" is rewritten in C.
* "git remote" is rewritten in C.
* Two conflict hunks that are separated by a very short span of common
lines are now coalesced into one larger hunk, to make the result easier
to read.
* Run-command API's use of file descriptors is documented clearer and
is more consistent now.
* diff output can be sent to FILE * that is different from stdout. This
will help reimplementing more things in C.
Fixes since v1.5.4
------------------
All of the fixes in v1.5.4 maintenance series are included in
this release, unless otherwise noted.
* "git-http-push" did not allow deletion of remote ref with the usual
"push <remote> :<branch>" syntax.
* "git-rebase --abort" did not go back to the right location if
"git-reset" was run during the "git-rebase" session.
* "git imap-send" without setting imap.host did not error out but
segfaulted.
