Git v1.8.5 Release Notes
========================

Backward compatibility notes (for Git 2.0)
------------------------------------------

When "git push [$there]" does not say what to push, we have used the
traditional "matching" semantics so far (all your branches were sent
to the remote as long as there already are branches of the same name
over there).  In Git 2.0, the default will change to the "simple"
semantics that pushes:

 - only the current branch to the branch with the same name, and only
   when the current branch is set to integrate with that remote
   branch, if you are pushing to the same remote as you fetch from; or

 - only the current branch to the branch with the same name, if you
   are pushing to a remote that is not where you usually fetch from.

Use the user preference configuration variable "push.default" to
change this.  If you are an old-timer who is used to the "matching"
semantics, you can set the variable to "matching" to keep the
traditional behaviour.  If you want to live in the future early, you
can set it to "simple" today without waiting for Git 2.0.

When "git add -u" (and "git add -A") is run inside a subdirectory and
does not specify which paths to add on the command line, it
will operate on the entire tree in Git 2.0 for consistency
with "git commit -a" and other commands.  There will be no
mechanism to make plain "git add -u" behave like "git add -u .".
Current users of "git add -u" (without a pathspec) should start
training their fingers to explicitly say "git add -u ."
before Git 2.0 comes.  A warning is issued when these commands are
run without a pathspec and when you have local changes outside the
current directory, because the behaviour in Git 2.0 will be different
from today's version in such a situation.

In Git 2.0, "git add <path>" will behave as "git add -A <path>", so
that "git add dir/" will notice paths you removed from the directory
and record the removal.  Versions before Git 2.0, including this
release, will keep ignoring removals, but the users who rely on this
behaviour are encouraged to start using "git add --ignore-removal <path>"
now before 2.0 is released.


Updates since v1.8.4
--------------------

Foreign interfaces, subsystems and ports.

 * remote-hg remote helper misbehaved when interacting with a local Hg
   repository relative to the home directory, e.g. "clone hg::~/there".

 * imap-send ported to OS X uses Apple's security framework instead of
   OpenSSL one.

 * Subversion 1.8.0 that was recently released breaks older subversion
   clients coming over http/https in various ways.

 * "git fast-import" treats an empty path given to "ls" as the root of
   the tree.


UI, Workflows & Features

 * Magic pathspecs like ":(icase)makefile" that matches both
   Makefile and makefile can be used in more places.

 * The "http.*" variables can now be specified per URL that the
   configuration applies.  For example,

   [http]
       sslVerify = true
   [http "https://weak.example.com/"]
       sslVerify = false

   would flip http.sslVerify off only when talking to that specified
   site.

 * "git mv A B" when moving a submodule A has been taught to
   relocate its working tree and to adjust the paths in the
   .gitmodules file.

 * "git blame" can now take more than one -L option to discover the
   origin of multiple blocks of the lines.

 * The http transport clients can optionally ask to save cookies
   with http.savecookies configuration variable.

 * "git push" learned a more fine grained control over a blunt
   "--force" when requesting a non-fast-forward update with the
   "--force-with-lease=<refname>:<expected object name>" option.

 * "git diff --diff-filter=<classes of changes>" can now take
   lowercase letters (e.g. "--diff-filter=d") to mean "show
   everything but these classes".  "git diff-files -q" is now a
   deprecated synonym for "git diff-files --diff-filter=d".

 * "git fetch" (hence "git pull" as well) learned to check
   "fetch.prune" and "remote.*.prune" configuration variables and
   to behave as if the "--prune" command line option was given.

 * "git check-ignore -z" applied the NUL termination to both its input
   (with --stdin) and its output, but "git check-attr -z" ignored the
   option on the output side. Make both honor -z on the input and
   output side the same way.

 * "git whatchanged" may still be used by old timers, but mention of
   it in documents meant for new users will only waste readers' time
   wonderig what the difference is between it and "git log".  Make it
   less prominent in the general part of the documentation and explain
   that it is merely a "git log" with different default behaviour in
   its own document.


Performance, Internal Implementation, etc.

 * Many commands use --dashed-option as a operation mode selector
   (e.g. "git tag --delete") that the user can use at most one
   (e.g. "git tag --delete --verify" is a nonsense) and you cannot
   negate (e.g. "git tag --no-delete" is a nonsense).  parse-options
   API learned a new OPT_CMDMODE macro to make it easier to implement
   such a set of options.

 * OPT_BOOLEAN() in parse-options API was misdesigned to be "counting
   up" but many subcommands expect it to behave as "on/off". Update
   them to use OPT_BOOL() which is a proper boolean.

 * "git gc" exits early without doing a double-work when it detects
   that another instance of itself is already running.

 * Under memory pressure and/or file descriptor pressure, we used to
   close pack windows that are not used and also closed filehandle to
   an open but unused packfiles. These are now controlled separately
   to better cope with the load.

Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups.


Fixes since v1.8.4
------------------

Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.8.4 in the maintenance
track are contained in this release (see release notes to them for
details).

 * The mailmap support code read past the allocated buffer when the
   mailmap file ended with an incomplete line.
   (merge f972a16 jk/mailmap-incomplete-line later to maint).

 * We used to send a large request to read(2)/write(2) as a single
   system call, which was bad from the latency point of view when
   the operation needs to be killed, and also triggered an error on
   broken 64-bit systems that refuse to take more than 2GB read or
   write in one go.
   (merge a487916 sp/clip-read-write-to-8mb later to maint).

 * "git fetch" that auto-followed tags incorrectly reused the
   connection with Git-aware transport helper (like the sample "ext::"
   helper shipped with Git).
   (merge 0f73f8b jc/transport-do-not-use-connect-twice-in-fetch later to maint).

 * "git log --full-diff -- <pathspec>" showed a huge diff for paths
   outside the given <pathspec> for each commit, instead of showing
   the change relative to the parent of the commit.  "git reflog -p"
   had a similar problem.
   (merge 838f9a1 tr/log-full-diff-keep-true-parents later to maint).

 * Setting submodule.*.path configuration variable to true (without
   giving "= value") caused Git to segfault.
   (merge 4b05440 jl/some-submodule-config-are-not-boolean later to maint).

 * "git rebase -i" (there could be others, as the root cause is pretty
   generic) fed a random, data dependeant string to 'echo' and
   expects it to come out literally, corrupting its error message.
   (merge 89b0230 mm/no-shell-escape-in-die-message later to maint).

 * Some people still use rather old versions of bash, which cannot
   grok some constructs like 'printf -v varname' the prompt and
   completion code started to use recently.
   (merge a44aa69 bc/completion-for-bash-3.0 later to maint).

 * Code to read configuration from a blob object did not compile on
   platforms with fgetc() etc. implemented as macros.
   (merge 49d6cfa hv/config-from-blob later to maint-1.8.3).

 * The recent "short-cut clone connectivity check" topic broke a
   shallow repository when a fetch operation tries to auto-follow tags.
   (merge 6da8bdc nd/fetch-pack-shallow-fix later to maint-1.8.3).