git-2.43.0

[Bruce Dubbs]

New minor version.

[Bruce Dubbs]

Git v2.43 Release Notes

Backward Compatibility Notes

• The "--rfc" option of "git format-patch" used to be a valid way to override an earlier "--subject-prefix=<something>" on the command line and replace it with "[RFC PATCH]", but from this release, it merely prefixes the string "RFC " in front of the given subject prefix. If you are negatively affected by this change, please use "--subject-prefix=PATCH --rfc" as a replacement.

• In Git 2.42, "git rev-list --stdin" learned to take non-revisions (like "--not") from the standard input, but the way such a "--not" was handled was quite confusing, which has been rethought. The updated rule is that "--not" given from the command line only affects revs given from the command line that comes but not revs read from the standard input, and "--not" read from the standard input affects revs given from the standard input and not revs given from the command line.

UI, Workflows & Features

• A message written in olden time prevented a branch from getting checked out, saying it is already checked out elsewhere. But these days, we treat a branch that is being bisected or rebased just like a branch that is checked out and protect it from getting modified with the same codepath. The message has been rephrased to say that the branch is "in use" to avoid confusion.

• Hourly and other schedules of "git maintenance" jobs are randomly distributed now.

• "git cmd -h" learned to signal which options can be negated by listing such options like "--[no-]opt".

• The way authentication related data other than passwords (e.g., oauth token and password expiration data) are stored in libsecret keyrings has been rethought.

• Update the libsecret and wincred credential helpers to correctly match which credential to erase; they erased the wrong entry in some cases.
• Git GUI updates.

• "git format-patch" learned a new "--description-file" option that lets cover letter description to be fed; this can be used on detached HEAD where there is no branch description available, and also can override the branch description if there is one.

• Use of the "--max-pack-size" option to allow multiple packfiles to be created is now supported even when we are sending unreachable objects to cruft packs.

• "git format-patch --rfc --subject-prefix=<foo>" used to ignore the "--subject-prefix" option and used "[RFC PATCH]"; now we will add "RFC" prefix to whatever subject prefix is specified.

• "git log --format" has been taught the %(decorate) placeholder for further customization over what the "--decorate" option offers.

• The default log message created by "git revert", when reverting a commit that records a revert, has been tweaked, to encourage people to describe complex "revert of revert of revert" situations better in their own words.

• The command-line completion support (in contrib/) learned to complete "git commit --trailer=" for possible trailer keys.

• "git update-index" learned the "--show-index-version" option to inspect the index format version used by the on-disk index file.

• "git diff" learned the "diff.statNameWidth" configuration variable, to give the default width for the name part in the "--stat" output.

• "git range-diff --notes=foo" compared "log --notes=foo --notes" of the two ranges, instead of using just the specified notes tree, which has been corrected to use only the specified notes tree.

• The command line completion script (in contrib/) can be told to complete aliases by including ": git <cmd> ;" in the alias to tell it that the alias should be completed in a similar way to how "git <cmd>" is completed. The parsing code for the alias has been loosened to allow ';' without an extra space before it.

• "git for-each-ref" and friends learned to apply mailmap to authorname and other fields in a more flexible way than using separate placeholder letters like %a[eElL] every time we want to come up with small variants.

• "git repack" machinery learned to pay attention to the "--filter=" option.

• "git repack" learned the "--max-cruft-size" option to prevent cruft packs from growing without bounds.

• "git merge-tree" learned to take strategy backend specific options via the "-X" option, like "git merge" does.

• "git log" and friends learned the "--dd" option that is a short-hand for "--diff-merges=first-parent -p".

• The attribute subsystem learned to honor the "attr.tree" configuration variable that specifies which tree to read the .gitattributes files from.

• "git merge-file" learns a mode to read three variants of the contents to be merged from blob objects.

Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc.

• "git check-attr" has been taught to work better with sparse-index.

• It may be tempting to leave the help text NULL for a command line option that is either hidden or too obvious, but "git subcmd -h" and "git subcmd --help-all" would have segfaulted if done so. Now the help text is truly optional.

• Tests that are known to pass with LSan are now marked as such.

• Flaky "git p4" tests, as well as "git svn" tests, are now skipped in the (rather expensive) sanitizer CI job.

• Tests with LSan from time to time seem to emit harmless messages that make our tests unnecessarily flaky; we work around it by filtering the uninteresting output.

• Unused parameters to functions are marked as such, and/or removed, in order to bring us closer to "-Wunused-parameter" clean.

• The code to keep track of existing packs in the repository while repacking has been refactored.

• The "streaming" interface used for bulk-checkin codepath has been narrowed to take only blob objects for now, with no real loss of functionality.

• GitHub CI workflow has learned to trigger Coverity check.

• Test coverage for trailers has been improved.

• The code to iterate over loose references has been optimized to reduce the number of lstat() system calls.

• The codepaths that read "chunk" formatted files have been corrected to pay attention to the chunk size and notice broken files.

• Replace macos-12 used at GitHub CI with macos-13.

[Bruce Dubbs]

Fixed at commits

01b92cda01 Update to git-2.43.0.
a7f175e0bc Update to libdrm-2.4.118.