Git 1.7.0.rc1

A release candidate Git 1.7.0.rc1 is available at the usual places for testing:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/

git-1.7.0.rc1.tar.{gz,bz2} (source tarball)
git-htmldocs-1.7.0.rc1.tar.{gz,bz2} (preformatted docs)
git-manpages-1.7.0.rc1.tar.{gz,bz2} (preformatted docs)

The RPM binary packages for a few architectures are found in:

testing/git-*-1.7.0.rc1-1.fc11.$arch.rpm (RPM)

Git v1.7.0 Release Notes (draft)
================================

Notes on behaviour change
-------------------------

* "git push" into a branch that is currently checked out (i.e. pointed by HEAD in a repository that is not bare) is refused by default.

Similarly, "git push $there :$killed" to delete the branch $killed in a remote repository $there, when $killed branch is the current branch pointed at by its HEAD, will be refused by default.

Setting the configuration variables receive.denyCurrentBranch and receive.denyDeleteCurrent to 'ignore' in the receiving repository can be used to override these safety features.

* "git send-email" does not make deep threads by default when sending a patch series with more than two messages. All messages will be sent as a reply to the first message, i.e. cover letter.

It has been possible to configure send-email to send "shallow thread" by setting sendemail.chainreplyto configuration variable to false. The only thing this release does is to change the default when you haven't configured that variable.

* "git status" is not "git commit --dry-run" anymore. This change does not affect you if you run the command without pathspec.

* "git diff" traditionally treated various "ignore whitespace" options only as a way to filter the patch output. "git diff --exit-code -b" exited with non-zero status even if all changes were about changing the ammount of whitespace and nothing else. and "git diff -b" showed the "diff --git" header line for such a change without patch text.

In this release, the "ignore whitespaces" options affect the semantics of the diff operation. A change that does not affect anything but whitespaces is reported with zero exit status when run with --exit-code, and there is no "diff --git" header for such a change.

Updates since v1.6.6
--------------------

(subsystems)

* "git fast-import" updates; adds "option" and "feature" to detect the mismatch between fast-import and the frontends that produce the input stream.

* "git svn" support of subversion "merge tickets" and miscellaneous fixes.

* "gitk" updates.

(portability)

* Some more MSVC portability patches for msysgit port.

* Minimum Pthreads emulation for msysgit port.

(performance)

* More performance improvement patches for msysgit port.

(usability, bells and whistles)

* More commands learned "--quiet" and "--[no-]progress" options.

* Various commands given by the end user (e.g. diff.type.textconv, and GIT_EDITOR) can be specified with command line arguments. E.g. it is now possible to say "[diff "utf8doc"] textconv = nkf -w".

* "sparse checkout" feature allows only part of the work tree to be checked out.

* HTTP transfer can use authentication scheme other than basic (i.e./e.g. digest).

* Switching from a version of superproject that used to have a submodule to another version of superproject that no longer has it did not remove the submodule directory when it should (namely, when you are not interested in the submodule at all and didn't clone/checkout).

* A new attribute conflict-marker-size can be used to change the size of the conflict markers from the default 7; this is useful when tracked contents (e.g. git-merge documentation) have strings that resemble the conflict markers.

* A new syntax "<branch>@{upstream}" can be used on the command line to substitute the name of the "upstream" of the branch. Missing branch defaults to the current branch, so "git fetch && git merge @{upstream}" will be equivalent to "git pull".

* "git branch --set-upstream" can be used to update the (surprise!) upstream i.e. where the branch is supposed to pull and merge from (or rebase onto).

* "git checkout A...B" is a way to detach HEAD at the merge base between A and B.

* "git checkout -m path" to reset the work tree file back into the conflicted state works even when you already ran "git add path" and resolved the conflicts.

* "git commit --date='<date>'" can be used to override the author date just like "git commit --author='<name> <email>'" can be used to override the author identity.

* "git commit --no-status" can be used to omit the listing of the index and the work tree status in the editor used to prepare the log message.

* "git commit" warns a bit more aggressively until you configure user.email, whose default value almost always is not (and fundamentally cannot be) what you want.

* "git difftool" has been extended to make it easier to integrate it with gitk.

* "git fetch --all" can now be used in place of "git remote update".

* "git grep" does not rely on external grep anymore. It can use more than one threads to accelerate the operation.

* "git grep" learned "--no-index" option, to search inside contents that are not managed by git.

* "git grep" learned "--quiet" option.

* "git log" and friends learned "--glob=heads/*" syntax that is a more flexible way to complement "--branches/--tags/--remotes".

* "git merge" learned to pass options specific to strategy-backends. E.g.

- "git merge -Xsubtree=path/to/directory" can be used to tell the subtree strategy how much to shift the trees explicitly.

- "git merge -Xtheirs" can be used to auto-merge as much as possible, while discarding your own changes and taking merged version in conflicted regions.

* "git push" learned "git push origin --delete branch", a syntactic sugar for "git push origin :branch".

* "git push" learned "git push --set-upstream origin forker:forkee" that lets you configure your "forker" branch to later pull from "forkee" branch at "origin".

* "git rebase --onto A...B" means the history is replayed on top of the merge base between A and B.

* "git rebase -i" learned new action "fixup", that squashes the change but does not affect existing log message.

* "git rebase -i" also learned --autosquash option, that is useful together with the new "fixup" action.

* "git remote" learned set-url subcommand, to update (surprise!) url for an existing remote nickname.

* "git rerere" learned "forget path" subcommand. Together with "git checkout -m path" it will be useful when you recorded a wrong resolution.

* Use of "git reset --merge" has become easier when resetting away a conflicted mess left in the work tree.

* "git rerere" had rerere.autoupdate configuration but there was no way to countermand it from the command line; --no-rerere-autoupdate option given to "merge", "revert", etc. fixes this.

* "git status" learned "-s(hort)" output format.

(developers)

* The infrastructure to build foreign SCM interface has been updated.

* Many more commands are now built-in.

Fixes since v1.6.6
------------------

All of the fixes in v1.6.6.X maintenance series are included in this release, unless otherwise noted.

* "git branch -d branch" used to refuse deleting the branch even when the branch is fully merged to its upstream branch if it is not merged to the current branch. It now deletes it in such a case.

* "git config -f <relative path>" run from a subdirectory misbehaved. 65807ee (builtin-config: Fix crash when using "-f <relative path>" from non-root dir, 2010-01-26) may be merged to older maintenance branches.

* When "git diff" is asked to compare the work tree with something, it used to consider that a checked-out submodule with uncommitted changes is not modified; this could cause people to forget committing these changes in the submodule before committing in the superproject. It now considers such a change as a modification.

Does this deserve a mention in the "behavior changes" section, too, as it may be breaking certain configs (most likely those with full paths to filters which have spaces in them)?

-Peff

Perhaps. A patch with nice description, please?

How about this? We could also drop it from the "bells and whistles" section; I don't have a preference.

-- >8 --
Subject: [PATCH] mention new shell execution behavior in release notes

This is already in the "bells and whistles" section, but it also has a slight chance of breakage, so let's also mention it in the "changed behaviors" section.

---
 Documentation/RelNotes-1.7.0.txt |    7 +++++++
 1 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

index 997b026..f33e85d 100644
@@ -38,6 +38,13 @@ Notes on behaviour change
    whitespaces is reported with zero exit status when run with
    --exit-code, and there is no "diff --git" header for such a change.
 
+ * external diff and textconv helpers are now executed using the shell.
+   This makes them consistent with other programs executed by git, and
+   allows you to pass command-line parameters to the helpers. Any helper
+   paths containing spaces or other metacharacters now need to be
+   shell-quoted.  The affected helpers are GIT_EXTERNAL_DIFF in the
+   environment, and diff.*.command and diff.*.textconv in the config
+   file.
 
 Updates since v1.6.6
 --------------------

1.7.0.rc1.8.g1a26

Thanks.

Looks like the tag is missing in git.git.

Anders

Heya,

Feel free to tell me "go build 1.7.0.rc0 yourself and see" to any of these, but I can't right now, and am curious :).

Does 'git checkout -b mergebase-a-b A...B' work as expected?

Not --glob=refs/*?

Oh wow, neat, I guess that complements the 'git checkout A...B' behavior? Is there anywhere else that we could/should support this new syntax, but don't?

Did we add a config option for this?

Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier

That does work. Even shorter would be '--glob=*'.

-Ilari

This is not exactly true, since the list of command line options of the new "status" are different. For example, the change affect people who've been taught to always use "git commit" and "git status" with -a.

I suggest s/pathspec/argument/ in the sentence above:

* "git status" is not "git commit --dry-run" anymore. This change does not affect you if you run the command without argument.

Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/

Thanks; that makes sense.

In the release notes "git status" was not mentioned, also shortly explain the "-dirty" output generated by diff.

Added a paragraph to the "Pitfalls with submodules" section in user-manual.txt describing new and old behavior of "git status" and "git diff" for dirty submodules.

---
 Documentation/RelNotes-1.7.0.txt |   12 +++++++-----
 Documentation/user-manual.txt    |   20 ++++++++++++++++++++
 2 files changed, 27 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

index 6510d42..323ae54 100644
@@ -200,11 +200,13 @@ release, unless otherwise noted.
    from non-root dir, 2010-01-26) may be merged to older maintenance
    branches.
 
- * When "git diff" is asked to compare the work tree with something,
-   it used to consider that a checked-out submodule with uncommitted
-   changes is not modified; this could cause people to forget committing
-   these changes in the submodule before committing in the superproject.
-   It now considers such a change as a modification.
+ * When using "git status" or asking "git diff" to compare the work tree
+   with something, they used to consider that a checked-out submodule with
+   uncommitted changes is not modified; this could cause people to forget
+   committing these changes in the submodule before committing in the
+   superproject. They now consider such a change as a modification and
+   "git diff" will append a "-dirty" to the work tree side when generating
+   patch output or when used with the --submodule option.
 
 --
 exec >/var/tmp/1

index 517daca..fe6fb72 100644
@@ -3640,6 +3640,26 @@ Did you forget to 'git add'?
 Unable to checkout '261dfac35cb99d380eb966e102c1197139f7fa24' in submodule path 'a'
 -------------------------------------------------
 
+In older git versions it could be easily forgotten to commit new or modified
+files in a submodule, which silently leads to similar problems as not pushing
+the submodule changes. Starting with git 1.7.0 both "git status" and "git diff"
+in the superproject show submodules as modified when they contain new or
+modified files to protect against accidentally committing such a state. "git
+diff" will also add a "-dirty" to the work tree side when generating patch
+output or used with the --submodule option:
+
+-------------------------------------------------
+$ git diff
+diff --git a/sub b/sub
+--- a/sub
++++ b/sub
+@@ -1 +1 @@
+-Subproject commit 3f356705649b5d566d97ff843cf193359229a453
++Subproject commit 3f356705649b5d566d97ff843cf193359229a453-dirty
+$ git diff --submodule
+Submodule sub 3f35670..3f35670-dirty:
+-------------------------------------------------
+
 You also should not rewind branches in a submodule beyond commits that were
 ever recorded in any superproject.
 

1.7.0.rc1.156.g05baa