Git 2.21 Release Notes
======================

Backward Compatibility Notes
----------------------------


Updates since v2.20
-------------------

UI, Workflows & Features

 * The "http.version" configuration variable can be used with recent
   enough cURL library to force the version of HTTP used to talk when
   fetching and pushing.

 * Small fixes and features for fast-export and fast-import, mostly on
   the fast-export side.

 * "git push $there $src:$dst" rejects when $dst is not a fully
   qualified refname and not clear what the end user meant.  The
   codepath has been taught to give a clearer error message, and also
   guess where the push should go by taking the type of the pushed
   object into account (e.g. a tag object would want to go under
   refs/tags/).

 * "git checkout [<tree-ish>] path..." learned to report the number of
   paths that have been checked out of the index or the tree-ish,
   which gives it the same degree of noisy-ness as the case in which
   the command checks out a branch.

 * "git quiltimport" learned "--keep-non-patch" option.

 * "git worktree remove" and "git worktree move" refused to work when
   there is a submodule involved.  This has been loosened to ignore
   uninitialized submodules.

 * "git cherry-pick -m1" was forbidden when picking a non-merge
   commit, even though there _is_ parent number 1 for such a commit.
   This was done to avoid mistakes back when "cherry-pick" was about
   picking a single commit, but is no longer useful with "cherry-pick"
   that can pick a range of commits.  Now the "-m$num" option is
   allowed when picking any commit, as long as $num names an existing
   parent of the commit.

 * Update "git multimail" from the upstream.

 * "git p4" update.

 * The "--format=<placeholder>" option of for-each-ref, branch and tag
   learned to show a few more traits of objects that can be learned by
   the object_info API.


Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc.

 * Code clean-up with optimization for the codepath that checks
   (non-)existence of loose objects.

 * More codepaths become aware of working with in-core repository
   instance other than the default "the_repository".

 * The "strncat()" function is now among the banned functions.

 * Portability updates for the HPE NonStop platform.

 * Earlier we added "-Wformat-security" to developer builds, assuming
   that "-Wall" (which includes "-Wformat" which in turn is required
   to use "-Wformat-security") is always in effect.  This is not true
   when config.mak.autogen is in use, unfortunately.  This has been
   fixed by unconditionally adding "-Wall" to developer builds.

 * The loose object cache used to optimize existence look-up has been
   updated.

 * Flaky tests can now be repeatedly run under load with the
   "--stress" option.
   (merge fb7d1e3ac8 sg/stress-test later to maint).


Fixes since v2.20
-----------------

 * Updates for corner cases in merge-recursive.
   (merge cc4cb0902c en/merge-path-collision later to maint).

 * "git checkout frotz" (without any double-dash) avoids ambiguity by
   making sure 'frotz' cannot be interpreted as a revision and as a
   path at the same time.  This safety has been updated to check also
   a unique remote-tracking branch 'frotz' in a remote, when dwimming
   to create a local branch 'frotz' out of a remote-tracking branch
   'frotz' from a remote.
   (merge be4908f103 nd/checkout-dwim-fix later to maint).

 * Refspecs configured with "git -c var=val clone" did not propagate
   to the resulting repository, which has been corrected.
   (merge 7eae4a3ac4 sg/clone-initial-fetch-configuration later to maint).

 * A properly configured username/email is required under
   user.useConfigOnly in order to create commits; now "git stash"
   (even though it creates commit objects to represent stash entries)
   command is exempt from the requirement.
   (merge 3bc2111fc2 sd/stash-wo-user-name later to maint).

 * The http-backend CGI process did not correctly clean up the child
   processes it spawns to run upload-pack etc. when it dies itself,
   which has been corrected.
   (merge 02818a98d7 mk/http-backend-kill-children-before-exit later to maint).

 * "git rev-list --exclude-promisor-objects" had to take an object
   that does not exist locally (and is lazily available) from the
   command line without barfing, but the code dereferenced NULL.
   (merge 4cf67869b2 md/list-lazy-objects-fix later to maint).

 * The traversal over tree objects has learned to honor
   ":(attr:label)" pathspec match, which has been implemented only for
   enumerating paths on the filesystem.
   (merge 5a0b97b34c nd/attr-pathspec-in-tree-walk later to maint).

 * BSD port updates.
   (merge 4e3ecbd439 cb/openbsd-allows-reading-directory later to maint).
   (merge b6bdc2a0f5 cb/t5004-empty-tar-archive-fix later to maint).
   (merge 82cbc8cde2 cb/test-lint-cp-a later to maint).

 * Lines that begin with a certain keyword that come over the wire, as
   well as lines that consist only of one of these keywords, ought to
   be painted in color for easier eyeballing, but the latter was
   broken ever since the feature was introduced in 2.19, which has
   been corrected.
   (merge 1f67290450 hn/highlight-sideband-keywords later to maint).

 * "git log -G<regex>" looked for a hunk in the "git log -p" patch
   output that contained a string that matches the given pattern.
   Optimize this code to ignore binary files, which by default will
   not show any hunk that would match any pattern (unless textconv or
   the --text option is in effect, that is).
   (merge e0e7cb8080 tb/log-G-binary later to maint).

 * "git submodule update" ought to use a single job unless asked, but
   by mistake used multiple jobs, which has been fixed.
   (merge e3a9d1aca9 sb/submodule-fetchjobs-default-to-one later to maint).

 * "git stripspace" should be usable outside a git repository, but
   under the "-s" or "-c" mode, it didn't.
   (merge 957da75802 jn/stripspace-wo-repository later to maint).

 * Some of the documentation pages formatted incorrectly with
   Asciidoctor, which have been fixed.
   (merge b62eb1d2f4 ma/asciidoctor later to maint).

 * The core.worktree setting in a submodule repository should not be
   pointing at a directory when the submodule loses its working tree
   (e.g. getting deinit'ed), but the code did not properly maintain
   this invariant.

 * With zsh, "git cmd path<TAB>" was completed to "git cmd path name"
   when the completed path has a special character like SP in it,
   without any attempt to keep "path name" a single filename.  This
   has been fixed to complete it to "git cmd path\ name" just like
   Bash completion does.

 * The test suite tried to see if it is run under bash, but the check
   itself failed under some other implementations of shell (notably
   under NetBSD).  This has been corrected.
   (merge 54ea72f09c sg/test-bash-version-fix later to maint).

 * "git gc" and "git repack" did not close the open packfiles that
   they found unneeded before removing them, which didn't work on a
   platform incapable of removing an open file.  This has been
   corrected.
   (merge 5bdece0d70 js/gc-repack-close-before-remove later to maint).

 * Code cleanup, docfix, build fix, etc.
   (merge 89ba9a79ae hb/t0061-dot-in-path-fix later to maint).
   (merge d173e799ea sb/diff-color-moved-config-option-fixup later to maint).
   (merge a8f5a59067 en/directory-renames-nothanks-doc-update later to maint).
   (merge ec36c42a63 nd/indentation-fix later to maint).
   (merge f116ee21cd do/gitweb-strict-export-conf-doc later to maint).
   (merge 112ea42663 fd/gitweb-snapshot-conf-doc-fix later to maint).
   (merge 1cadad6f65 tb/use-common-win32-pathfuncs-on-cygwin later to maint).
   (merge 57e9dcaa65 km/rebase-doc-typofix later to maint).
   (merge b8b4cb27e6 ds/gc-doc-typofix later to maint).
   (merge 3b3357626e nd/style-opening-brace later to maint).
   (merge b4583d5595 es/doc-worktree-guessremote-config later to maint).
   (merge cce99cd8c6 ds/commit-graph-assert-missing-parents later to maint).
   (merge 0650614982 cy/completion-typofix later to maint).
   (merge 6881925ef5 rs/sha1-file-close-mapped-file-on-error later to maint).
   (merge bd8d6f0def en/show-ref-doc-fix later to maint).