Git v1.7.4 Release Notes

Git v1.7.4 Release Notes ======================== Updates since v1.7.3 -------------------- * The documentation Makefile now assumes by default asciidoc 8 and docbook-xsl >= 1.73. If you have older versions, you can set ASCIIDOC7 and ASCIIDOC_ROFF, respectively. * The option parsers of various commands that create new branches (or rename existing ones to a new name) were too loose and users were allowed to give a branch a name that begins with a dash by creative abuse of their command line options, which only led to burning themselves. The name of a branch cannot begin with a dash now. * System-wide fallback default attributes can be stored in /etc/gitattributes; the core.attributesfile configuration variable can be used to customize the path to this file. * The thread structure generated by "git send-email" has changed slightly. Setting the cover letter of the latest series as a reply to the cover letter of the previous series with --in-reply-to used to make the new cover letter and all the patches replies to the cover letter of the previous series; this has been changed to make the patches in the new series replies to the new cover letter. * The Bash completion script in contrib/ has been adjusted to be usable with Bash 4 (options with '=value' didn't complete). It has been also made usable with zsh. * Different pagers can be chosen depending on which subcommand is being run under the pager, using the "pager.<subcommand>" variable. * The hardcoded tab-width of 8 that is used in whitespace breakage checks is now configurable via the attributes mechanism. * Support of case insensitive filesystems (i.e. "core.ignorecase") has been improved. For example, the gitignore mechanism didn't pay attention to case insensitivity. * The <tree>:<path> syntax for naming a blob in a tree, and the :<path> syntax for naming a blob in the index (e.g. "master:Makefile", ":hello.c") have been extended. You can start <path> with "./" to implicitly have the (sub)directory you are in prefixed to the lookup. Similarly, ":../Makefile" from a subdirectory would mean "the Makefile of the parent directory in the index". * "git blame" learned the --show-email option to display the e-mail addresses instead of the names of authors. * "git commit" learned the --fixup and --squash options to help later invocation of interactive rebase. * Command line options to "git cvsimport" whose names are in capital letters (-A, -M, -R and -S) can now be specified as the default in the .git/config file by their longer names (cvsimport.authorsFile, cvsimport.mergeRegex, cvsimport.trackRevisions, cvsimport.ignorePaths). * "git daemon" can be built in the MinGW environment. * "git daemon" can take more than one --listen option to listen to multiple addresses. * "git describe --exact-match" was optimized not to read commit objects unnecessarily. * "git diff" and "git grep" learned what functions and subroutines in Fortran, Pascal and Perl look like. * "git fetch" learned the "--recurse-submodules" option. * "git mergetool" tells vim/gvim to show a three-way diff by default (use vimdiff2/gvimdiff2 as the

This release of Git introduces several updates, including improvements to documentation, branch naming, and various command line options, as well as new features such as configurable tab-width, support for case insensitive filesystems, and extended syntax for naming blobs in trees and the index.