* A catch-all "color.ui" configuration variable can be used to

enable coloring of all color-capable commands, instead of

individual ones such as "color.status" and "color.branch".

* The commands refused to take absolute pathnames where they

require pathnames relative to the work tree or the current

subdirectory. They now can take absolute pathnames in such a

case as long as the pathnames do not refer outside of the

work tree. E.g. "git add $(pwd)/foo" now works.

* Error messages used to be sent to stderr, only to get hidden,

when $PAGER was in use. They now are sent to stdout along

with the command output to be shown in the $PAGER.

* bash completion's prompt helper function can talk about

operation in-progress (e.g. merge, rebase, etc.).

* Configuration variables "url.<usethis>.insteadof = <otherurl>" can be

used to tell "git-fetch" and "git-push" to use different URL than what

is given from the command line.

* "git push <somewhere> HEAD" and "git push <somewhere> +HEAD" works as

expected; they push the current branch (and only the current branch).

In addition, HEAD can be written as the value of "remote.<there>.push"

configuration variable.

* "git add -i" behaves better even before you make an initial commit.

* After "git apply --whitespace=fix" fixes whitespace errors in a patch,

a line before the fix can appear as a context or preimage line in a

later patch, causing the patch not to apply. The command now knows to

see through whitespace fixes done to context lines to successfully

apply such a patch series.

* "git branch" (and "git checkout -b") to branch from a local branch can

optionally set "branch.<name>.merge" to mark the new branch to build on

the other local branch, when "branch.autosetupmerge" is set to

"always". By default, this does not happen when branching from a local

branch.

* "git checkout" to switch to a branch that has "branch.<name>.merge" set

(i.e. marked to build on another branch) reports how much the branch

and the other branch diverged.

* When "git checkout" has to update a lot of paths, it used to be silent

for 4 seconds before it showed any progress report. It is now a bit

more impatient and starts showing progress report early.

* "git commit" learned a new hook "prepare-commit-msg" that can

inspect what is going to be committed and prepare the commit

log message template to be edited.

* "git describe --exact-match" describes only commits that are tagged.

* "git diff" learned "--relative" option to limit and output paths

relative to the current directory when working in a subdirectory.

* "git diff" learned "--dirstat" option to show birds-eye-summary of

changes more concisely than "--diffstat".

* "git format-patch" learned --cover-letter option to generate a cover

letter template.

* "git grep" now knows "--name-only" is a synonym for the "-l" option.

* "git help <alias>" now reports "'git <alias>' is alias to <what>",

instead of saying "No manual entry for git-<alias>".

* "git log --grep=<what>" learned "--fixed-strings" option to look for

<what> without treating it as a regular expression.

* When the configuration variable "pack.threads" is set to 0, "git

repack" auto detects the number of CPUs and uses that many threads.

* "git checkout" is rewritten in C.

* Two conflict hunks that are separated by a very short span of common

lines are now coalesced into one larger hunk, to make the result easier

to read.

* Run-command API's use of file descriptors is documented clearer and

is more consistent now.

O=v1.5.4.3-339-g7cf7f54