Git Release Notes: Optimizations and Fixes

what is invoked by "git fetch" on the other side of the connection) to list what refs are available in the repository has been optimized. * The logic to find set of attributes that match a given path has been optimized. * Use preloadindex in "git diff-index" and "git update-index", which has a nice speedup on systems with slow stat calls (and even on Linux). Also contains minor documentation updates and code clean-ups. Fixes since v1.8.0 ------------------ Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.8.0 in the maintenance track are contained in this release (see release notes to them for details). * The configuration parser had an unnecessary hardcoded limit on variable names that was not checked consistently. * The "say" function in the test scaffolding incorrectly allowed "echo" to interpret "\a" as if it were a C-string asking for a BEL output. * "git mergetool" feeds /dev/null as a common ancestor when dealing with an add/add conflict, but p4merge backend cannot handle it. Work it around by passing a temporary empty file. * "git log -F -E --grep='<ere>'" failed to use the given <ere> pattern as extended regular expression, and instead looked for the string literally. * "git grep -e pattern <tree>" asked the attribute system to read "<tree>:.gitattributes" file in the working tree, which was nonsense. * A symbolic ref refs/heads/SYM was not correctly removed with "git branch -d SYM"; the command removed the ref pointed by SYM instead. * Update "remote tracking branch" in the documentation to "remote-tracking branch". * "git pull --rebase" run while the HEAD is detached tried to find the upstream branch of the detached HEAD (which by definition does not exist) and emitted unnecessary error messages. * The refs/replace hierarchy was not mentioned in the repository-layout docs. * Various rfc2047 quoting issues around a non-ASCII name on the From: line in the output from format-patch have been corrected. * Sometimes curl_multi_timeout() function suggested a wrong timeout value when there is no file descriptor to wait on and

This portion of the Git release notes details various optimizations, including improved logic for listing available refs and finding attributes, as well as fixes for issues such as configuration parser limitations, test scaffolding problems, and incorrect behavior in commands like 'git mergetool' and 'git log'?