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Git 2.49.0 has been released with enhancements in the user interface, workflows, and features of the project. The release features modifications to the completion scripts for zsh, including the implementation of an alternative path-hash function for delta-base selection, the introduction of "git backfill" for bulk downloading essential files, and the re-enabling of netrc support for HTTP transport. Furthermore, the documentation for "git commit" and "git rebase" now designates commit titles accordingly, rather than referring to them as "subject".

The meson-based build now includes support for the unsafe-sha1 build knob, and the meson-based build procedure encompasses contrib/ and additional locations. The code for verifying LSan results has been streamlined and enhanced for greater reliability. A greater number of code paths now utilize a repository that is passed through the call chain, rather than relying on the primary the_repository object by default.



A greater number of unit tests have been transitioned to the clar test framework, and a new API has been implemented to facilitate the visitation of objects in batches, either according to a common path or by type. The code paths for interacting with zlib have been refined in anticipation of building with zlib-ng.

Recent updates since version 2.48 encompass a micro optimization in the rename processing within the recursive merge backend, the introduction of a new large-object promisor protocol extension, and an enhanced editorconfig file. The meson-based build procedure has been updated to include the necessary dependencies, and the meson-driven build now recognizes "git-subtree" located in the contrib/subtree hierarchy.

The handling of authtype in the "cache" credential back-end has been rectified for accuracy. Additional corrections encompass issues with broken reflog entries related to symbolic ref updates, inaccuracies in trace2 code, and errors in the migration of reflog for refs/stash. The API for utilizing unsafe variants of the SHA-1 implementation has been revised to enhance security and mitigate potential misuse. The code path utilized for fetching from a bundle file inadvertently closed the same file descriptor on two occasions, leading to occasional unexpected issues when the file descriptor was reused. The code path utilized during the reinitialization of a repository must maintain consistency with the hash function and reference backends. The code path utilized during the execution of "git fetch" from a bundle file inadvertently closed the same file descriptor twice, leading to occasional unexpected issues when the file descriptor was reused. The code path utilized during the execution of "git init" to reinitialize a repository does not permit alterations to the hash function, and the reference backends have been discreetly disregarded. The implementation utilized by "git apply" has been revised to address the handling of line numbers, which previously relied on unsigned long data types and the strtoul() function for parsing numbers in the hunk headers. The -G/-S options for the "diff" family of commands have been rectified. Additional code cleanup, documentation corrections, and build improvements have been implemented. 

Git v2.49.0

Git v2.49 Release NoteUI, Workflows & Features

  • Completion script updates for zsh

  • "git pack-objects" and its wrapper "git repack" learned an option to use an alternative path-hash function to improve delta-base selection to produce a packfile with deeper history than window size.

  • "git gc" learned the "--expire-to" option and passes it down to underlying "git repack".

  • "[help] autocorrect = 1" used to be a way to say "please wait for 0.1 second after suggesting a typofix of the command name before running that command"; now it means "yes, if there is a plausible typofix for the command name, please run it immediately".

  • "git clone" learned to make a shallow clone for a single commit that is not necessarily be at the tip of any branch.

  • Lazy-loading missing files in a blobless clone on demand is costly as it tends to be one-blob-at-a-time. "git backfill" is introduced to help bulk-download necessary files beforehand.

  • "git push --atomic --porcelain" used to ignore failures from the other side, losing the error status from the child process, which has been corrected.

  • "git rev-list --missing=" learned to accept "print-info" that gives known details expected of the missing objects, like path and type.

  • Comes with an updated "gitk".

  • The documentation of "git commit" and "git rebase" now refer to commit titles as such, not "subject".

  • The value of "uname -s" is by default sent over the wire as a part of the "version" capability.

  • "git refs migrate" can optionally be told not to migrate the reflog.

  • The netrc support (via the cURL library) for the HTTP transport has been re-enabled.

  • Removal of ".git/branches" and ".git/remotes" support in the BreakingChanges document has been further clarified.

  • What happens to submodules during merge has been documented in a bit more detail.

Performance, Internal Implementation, Development Support etc.

  • More -Wsign-compare fixes.

  • meson-based build now supports the unsafe-sha1 build knob.

  • The meson-based build procedure covers contrib/ and other places as well.

  • The code to check LSan results has been simplified and made more robust. (merge 164a2516eb jk/lsan-race-ignore-false-positive later to maint).

  • More code paths have a repository passed through the callchain, instead of assuming the primary the_repository object.

  • Move a few more unit tests to the clar test framework.

  • Introduce a new API to visit objects in batches based on a common path, or by type.

  • Following the procedure we established to introduce breaking changes for Git 3.0, allow an early opt-in for removing support of $GIT_DIR/branches/ and $GIT_DIR/remotes/ directories to configure remotes.

  • The code paths to interact with zlib has been cleaned up in preparation for building with zlib-ng.

  • Foreign language interface for Rust into our code base has been added.

  • All the documentation .txt files have been renamed to .adoc to help content aware editors.

  • "git difftool" code clean-up.

  • Rename processing in the recursive merge backend has seen a micro optimization.

  • The path.[ch] API takes an explicit repository parameter passed throughout the callchain, instead of relying on the_repository singleton instance.

  • Large-object promisor protocol extension has been introduced.

  • The editorconfig file is updated to tell us that bash scripts are similar to general Bourne shell scripts.

  • Meson-based build procedure forgot to build some docs, which has been corrected.

Fixes since v2.48

  • "git submodule" learned various ways to spell the same option, e.g. "--branch=B" can be spelled "--branch B" or "-bB". (merge b86f0f9071 re/submodule-parse-opt later to maint).

  • Tweak the help text used for the option value placeholders by parse-options API so that translations can customize the "<>" placeholder signal (e.g. "--option=<value>"). (merge 5b34dd08d0 as/long-option-help-i18n later to maint).

  • CI jobs gave sporadic failures, which turns out that that the object finalization code was giving an error when it did not have to. (merge d7fcbe2c56 ps/object-collision-check later to maint).

  • The code to compute "unique" name used git_rand() which can fail or get stuck; the callsite does not require cryptographic security. Introduce the "insecure" mode and use it appropriately. (merge 0b4f8afef6 ps/reftable-get-random-fix later to maint).

  • A misconfigured "fsck.skiplist" configuration variable was not diagnosed as an error, which has been corrected. (merge ca7158076f jt/fsck-skiplist-parse-fix later to maint).

  • Extended SHA-1 expression parser did not work well when a branch with an unusual name (e.g. "foo{bar") is involved. (merge 191f0c8db2 en/object-name-with-funny-refname-fix later to maint).

  • The meson build procedure looked for the version-def.h file in a wrong directory, which has been corrected. (merge 4771501c0a tc/meson-use-our-version-def-h later to maint).

  • The meson build procedure for Documentation/technical/ hierarchy was missing necessary dependencies, which has been corrected. (merge 1dca492edd sj/meson-doc-technical-dependency-fix later to maint).

  • The "instaweb" bound only to local IP address without "--local" and to all addresses with "--local", which was the other way around, when using Python’s http.server class, which has been corrected. (merge 76baf97fa1 ak/instaweb-python-port-binding-fix later to maint).

  • Document that it is insecure to use Personal Access Tokens, which some hosting providers take as username/password, embedded in URLs. (merge a90ff409f0 mh/doc-credential-helpers-with-pat later to maint).

  • The help text from "git $cmd -h" appear on the standard output for some $cmd and the standard error for others. The built-in commands have been fixed to show them on the standard output consistently. (merge f66d1423f5 jc/show-usage-help later to maint).

  • The meson-driven build is now aware of "git-subtree" housed in contrib/subtree hierarchy. (merge 8454b42f94 ps/build-meson-subtree later to maint).

  • It was possible for "git unpack-objects" and "git index-pack" to make an unaligned access, which has been corrected. (merge 98046591b9 jk/pack-header-parse-alignment-fix later to maint).

  • The "cache" credential back-end did not handle authtype correctly, which has been corrected. (merge 0b43274850 mh/credential-cache-authtype-request-fix later to maint).

  • "git branch --sort=…​" and "git for-each-ref --format=…​ --sort=…​" did not work as expected with some atoms, which has been corrected. (merge c5490ce9d1 rs/ref-fitler-used-atoms-value-fix later to maint).

  • reflog entries for symbolic ref updates were broken, which has been corrected. (merge 3519492430 kn/reflog-symref-fix later to maint).

  • The trace2 code was not prepared to show a configuration variable that is set to true using the valueless true syntax, which has been corrected. (merge 2fd367cf63 am/trace2-with-valueless-true later to maint).

  • The "git refs migrate" command did not migrate the reflog for refs/stash, which is the contents of the stashes, which has been corrected. (merge a0bea0978f ps/reflog-migration-with-logall-fix later to maint).

  • Doc and short-help text for "show-index" has been clarified to stress that the command reads its data from the standard input. (merge 49edce4ff9 jc/show-index-h-update later to maint).

  • The API around choosing to use unsafe variant of SHA-1 implementation has been updated in an attempt to make it harder to abuse. (merge 04292c3796 tb/unsafe-hash-cleanup later to maint).

  • Fix bugs in an earlier attempt to fix "git refs migration". (merge f11f0a5a2d kn/reflog-migration-fix-fix later to maint).

  • The code path used when "git fetch" fetches from a bundle file closed the same file descriptor twice, which sometimes broke things unexpectedly when the file descriptor was reused, which has been corrected. (merge 9a84794ad8 js/bundle-unbundle-fd-reuse-fix later to maint).

  • "git init" to reinitialize a repository that already exists cannot change the hash function and ref backends; such a request is silently ignored now. (merge 7e88640cd1 ps/setup-reinit-fixes later to maint).

  • "git apply" internally uses unsigned long for line numbers and uses strtoul() to parse numbers on the hunk headers. It however forgot to check parse errors. (merge a206058fda pw/apply-ulong-overflow-check later to maint).

  • Two CI tasks, whitespace check and style check, work on the difference from the base version and the version being checked, but the base was computed incorrectly in GitLab CI in some cases, which has been corrected. (merge acc4fb302b jt/gitlab-ci-base-fix later to maint).

  • "git repack --keep-unreachable" to send unreachable objects to the main pack "git repack -ad" produces did not work when there is no existing packs, which has been corrected. (merge 414c82300a ps/repack-keep-unreachable-in-unpacked-repo later to maint).

  • Going into a secondary worktree and asking "is the main worktree bare?" did not work correctly when per-worktree configuration option was in use, which has been corrected.

  • Fetching into a bare repository incorrectly assumed it always used a mirror layout when deciding to update remote-tracking HEAD, which has been corrected. (merge 93dc16483a bf/fetch-set-head-fix later to maint).

  • A thunderbird helper script lost its bashism. (merge 59d26bd961 bc/contrib-thunderbird-patch-inline-fix later to maint).

  • The -G/-S options to the "diff" family of commands caused us to hit a BUG() when they get no values; they have been corrected. (merge a620046b29 bc/diff-reject-empty-arg-to-pickaxe later to maint).

  • "git merge-tree --stdin" has been improved (including a workaround for a deadlock). (merge 6a9ae81015 pw/merge-tree-stdin-deadlock-fix later to maint).

  • Correct the default target in Documentation/Makefile, and future-proof all Makefiles from similar breakages by declaring the default target (which happens to be "all") upfront. (merge 5309c1e9fb ad/set-default-target-in-makefiles later to maint).

  • "git check-mailmap" used to segfault when queried without human readable name. (merge bb60c52131 jk/check-mailmap-wo-name-fix later to maint).

  • Support for renaming of symbolic links on Windows has been improved.

  • "git rebase -i" failed to allow rewording an empty commit that has been fast-forwarded. (merge af8fc7be10 pw/rebase-i-ff-empty-commit later to maint).

  • The use of "paste" command for aggregating the test results have been corrected. (merge ce98863204 dk/test-aggregate-results-paste-fix later to maint).

  • Other code cleanup, docfix, build fix, etc. (merge ddb5287894 jk/t7407-use-test-grep later to maint). (merge 21e1b44865 aj/difftool-config-doc-fix later to maint). (merge 6a63995335 mh/gitattr-doc-markup-fix later to maint). (merge 43850dcf9c sk/unit-test-hash later to maint). (merge 4ad47d2de3 jc/cli-doc-option-and-config later to maint). (merge 2d0ff147e5 jp/t8002-printf-fix later to maint). (merge 69666e6746 ja/doc-restore-markup-update later to maint). (merge d11d003ba5 sk/strlen-returns-size_t later to maint). (merge 77b2d29e91 ja/doc-notes-markup-updates later to maint). (merge 6979bf6f8f jk/combine-diff-cleanup later to maint). (merge 8705c9bd13 kn/pack-write-with-reduced-globals later to maint). (merge 087740d65a ps/leakfixes-0129 later to maint). (merge 6bba6f604b jp/doc-trailer-config later to maint). (merge f1cc562b77 lo/t7603-path-is-file-update later to maint). (merge 45761988ac en/doc-renormalize later to maint). (merge 832f56f06a jc/doc-boolean-synonyms later to maint). (merge 3eeed876a9 ac/doc-http-ssl-type-config later to maint). (merge c268e3285d jc/breaking-changes-early-adopter-option later to maint). (merge 0d03fda6a5 pb/doc-follow-remote-head later to maint).

Release v2.49.0 · git/git