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.


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.

 * "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.

Foreign Interface

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

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

 * 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 to learn the maximum number of file
   descriptors we can open around sysconf(_SC_OPEN_MAX) and
   getrlimit(RLIMIT_NO_FILE) has been introduced for portability.

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

 * 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).

 * "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).

 * "git for-each-ref" did not currectly support more than one --sort
   option.
   (merge 3b51222 kk/maint-for-each-ref-multi-sort later to maint).

 * Pushing to smart HTTP server with recent Git fails without having
   the username in the URL to force authentication, if the server is
   configured to allow GET anonymously, while requiring authentication
   for POST.
   (merge b81401c jk/maint-http-half-auth-push 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 synopsis said "checkout [-B branch]" to make it clear the
   branch name is a parameter to the option, but the heading for the
   option description was "-B::", not "-B branch::", making the
   documentation misleading.  There may be room in documentation pages
   of other commands for similar improvements (hint, hint).
   (merge 45aaf03 jc/maint-doc-checkout-b-always-takes-branch-name later to maint).

 * "git log .." errored out saying it is both rev range and a path
   when there is no disambiguating "--" is on the command line.
   Update the command line parser to interpret ".." as a path in such
   a case.
   (merge 003c84f jc/dotdot-is-parent-directory later to maint).

 * "git apply -p0" did not parse pathnames on "diff --git" line
   correctly.  This caused patches that had pathnames in no other
   places to be mistakenly rejected (most notably, binary patch that
   does not rename nor change mode).  Textual patches, renames or mode
   changes have preimage and postimage pathnames in different places
   in a form that can be parsed unambiguously and did not suffer from
   this problem.
   (merge 6a2abdc jc/apply-binary-p0 later to maint).

 * The exit status code from "git config" was way overspecified while
   being incorrect.  The implementation has been updated to give the
   documented status for a case that was documented, and introduce a
   new code for "all other errors".
   (merge 9409c7a jc/maint-config-exit-status later to maint).

 * "git foo" errored out with "Not a directory" when the user had a
   non-directory on $PATH, and worse yet it masked an alias "foo" from
   running.  (merge a785508 jc/maint-sane-execvp-notdir later to
   maint).

 * 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 51bbccf jc/send-email-reconfirm later to maint).

 * "git stash apply/pop" did not trigger "rerere" upon conflicts
   unlike other mergy operations.
   (merge 743bf6d ph/stash-rerere later to maint).

 * "git submodule update -f" did not update paths in the working tree
   that has local changes.
   (merge 01d4721 sz/submodule-force-update later to maint).

 * We used curl_easy_strerror() without checking version of cURL,
   breaking the build for versions before curl 7.12.0.
   (merge 4246b0b js/no-curl-easy-strerror-on-old-curl later to maint).

 * Code to work around MacOS X UTF-8 gotcha has been cleaned up.
   (merge 9a27f96 rr/precompose-utf8-cleanup later to maint).

 * Documentation for the configuration file format had a confusing
   example.
   (merge d1e1fe7 mh/maint-config-doc-proxy-command later to maint).

 * "git submodule <cmd> path" did not error out when the path to the
   submodule was misspelt.
   (merge be9d0a3 hv/submodule-path-unmatch later to maint).

 * Some capabilities were asked by fetch-pack even when upload-pack
   did not advertise that they are available.  fetch-pack has been
   fixed not to do so.

 * The reflog entries left by "git rebase" and "git rebase -i" were
   inconsistent (the interactive one gave an abbreviated object name).
   (merge 1af221e mg/rebase-i-onto-reflog-in-full later to maint).

 * When the user exports a non-default IFS without HT, scripts that
   rely on being able to parse "ls-files -s | while read a b c..."
   start to fail.  Protect them from such a misconfiguration.
   (merge 785063e jc/maint-protect-sh-from-ifs later to maint).

 * "git prune" without "-v" used to warn about leftover temporary
   files (which is an indication of an earlier aborted operation).
   (merge 90b29cb bc/prune-info later to maint).

 * When "git push" triggered the automatic gc on the receiving end, a
   message from "git prune" that said it was removing cruft leaked to
   the standard output, breaking the communication protocol.
   (merge 4b7f2fa bc/receive-pack-stdout-protection later to maint).

 * "git diff" had a confusion between taking data from a path in the
   working tree and taking data from an object that happens to have
   name 0{40} recorded in a tree.
   (merge c479d14 jk/maint-null-in-trees later to maint).

 * The output from "git diff -B" for a file that ends with an
   incomplete line did not put "\ No newline..." on a line of its own.

 * "git send-email" did not unquote encoded words that appear on the
   header correctly, and lost "_" from strings.
   (merge b622d4d tr/maint-send-email-2047 later to maint).

 * When the user gives an argument that can be taken as both a
   revision name and a pathname without disambiguating with "--", we
   used to give a help message "Use '--' to separate".  The message
   has been clarified to show where that '--' goes on the command
   line.
   (merge 4d4b573 mm/die-with-dashdash-help later to maint).

 * "gitweb" when used with PATH_INFO failed to notice directories with
   SP (and other characters that need URL-style quoting) in them.
   (merge cacfc09 js/gitweb-path-info-unquote later to maint).