Git v1.9 Release Notes
======================

Backward compatibility notes
----------------------------

"git submodule foreach $cmd $args" used to treat "$cmd $args" the same
way "ssh" did, concatenating them into a single string and letting the
shell unquote. Careless users who forget to sufficiently quote $args
gets their argument split at $IFS whitespaces by the shell, and got
unexpected results due to this. Starting from this release, the
command line is passed directly to the shell, if it has an argument.

Read-only support for experimental loose-object format, in which users
could optionally choose to write in their loose objects for a short
while between v1.4.3 to v1.5.3 era, has been dropped.

The meanings of "--tags" option to "git fetch" has changed; the
command fetches tags _in addition to_ what are fetched by the same
command line without the option.

A handful of ancient commands that have long been deprecated are
finally gone (repo-config, tar-tree, lost-found, and peek-remote).


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, which 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.

The default prefix for "git svn" will change in Git 2.0.  For a long
time, "git svn" created its remote-tracking branches directly under
refs/remotes, but it will place them under refs/remotes/origin/ unless
it is told otherwise with its --prefix option.


Updates since v1.8.5
--------------------

Foreign interfaces, subsystems and ports.

 * The HTTP transport, when talking GSS-Negotiate, uses "100
   Continue" response to avoid having to rewind and resend a large
   payload, which may not be always doable.

 * Various bugfixes to remote-bzr and remote-hg (in contrib/).


UI, Workflows & Features

 * "git for-each-ref --format=..." learned a few formatting directives;
   e.g. "%(color:red)%(HEAD)%(color:reset) %(refname:short) %(subject)".

 * The command string given to "git submodule foreach" is passed
   directly to the shell, without being eval'ed.  This is a backward
   incompatible change that may break existing users.

 * "git log" and friends learned the "--exclude=<glob>" option, to
   allow people to say "list history of all branches except those that
   match this pattern" with "git log --exclude='*/*' --branches".

 * "git rev-parse --parseopt" learned a new "--stuck-long" option to
   help scripts parse options with an optional parameter.

 * The "--tags" option to "git fetch" no longer tells the command to
   fetch _only_ the tags. It instead fetches tags _in addition to_
   what are fetched by the same command line without the option.


Performance, Internal Implementation, etc.

 * The new PERLLIB_EXTRA makefile variable can be used to specify
   additional directories Perl modules (e.g. the ones necessary to run
   git-svn) are installed on the platform when building.

 * "git merge-base" learned the "--fork-point" mode, that implements
   the same logic used in "git pull --rebase" to find a suitable fork
   point out of the reflog entries for the remote-tracking branch the
   work has been based on.

 * A third-party "receive-pack" (the responder to "git push") can
   advertise the "no-thin" capability to tell "git push" not to use
   the thin-pack optimization. Our receive-pack has always been
   capable of accepting and fattening a thin-pack, and will continue
   not to ask "git push" to use a non-thin pack.


Also contains various documentation updates and code clean-ups.


Fixes since v1.8.5
------------------

Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.8.5 in the maintenance
track are contained in this release (see the maintenance releases' notes
for details).

 * "git diff -- ':(icase)makefile'" was unnecessarily rejected at the
   command line parser.
   (merge 887c6c1 nd/magic-pathspec later to maint).

 * "git cat-file --batch-check=ok" did not check the existence of
   the named object.
   (merge 4ef8d1d sb/sha1-loose-object-info-check-existence later to maint).

 * "git am --abort" sometimes complained about not being able to write
   a tree with an 0{40} object in it.
   (merge 77b43ca jk/two-way-merge-corner-case-fix later to maint).

 * Two processes creating loose objects at the same time could have
   failed unnecessarily when the name of their new objects started
   with the same byte value, due to a race condition.
   (merge b2476a6 jh/loose-object-dirs-creation-race later to maint).
