11 files changed, 647 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.1.txt b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.1.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..33dc948b94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.1.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+Git v1.7.8.1 Release Notes
+==========================
+
+Fixes since v1.7.8
+------------------
+
+ * In some codepaths (notably, checkout and merge), the ignore patterns
+   recorded in $GIT_DIR/info/exclude were not honored. They now are.
+
+ * "git apply --check" did not error out when given an empty input
+   without any patch.
+
+ * "git archive" mistakenly allowed remote clients to ask for commits
+   that are not at the tip of any ref.
+
+ * "git checkout" and "git merge" treated in-tree .gitignore and exclude
+   file in $GIT_DIR/info/ directory inconsistently when deciding which
+   untracked files are ignored and expendable.
+
+ * LF-to-CRLF streaming filter used when checking out a large-ish blob
+   fell into an infinite loop with a rare input.
+
+ * The function header pattern for files with "diff=cpp" attribute did
+   not consider "type *funcname(type param1,..." as the beginning of a
+   function.
+
+ * The error message from "git diff" and "git status" when they fail
+   to inspect changes in submodules did not report which submodule they
+   had trouble with.
+
+ * After fetching from a remote that has very long refname, the reporting
+   output could have corrupted by overrunning a static buffer.
+
+ * "git pack-objects" avoids creating cyclic dependencies among deltas
+   when seeing a broken packfile that records the same object in both
+   the deflated form and as a delta.
+
+Also contains minor fixes and documentation updates.
diff --git a/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.2.txt b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.2.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..e74f4ef1ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.2.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,71 @@
+Git v1.7.8.2 Release Notes
+==========================
+
+Fixes since v1.7.8.1
+--------------------
+
+ * Porcelain commands like "git reset" did not distinguish deletions
+   and type-changes from ordinary modification, and reported them with
+   the same 'M' moniker. They now use 'D' (for deletion) and 'T' (for
+   type-change) to match "git status -s" and "git diff --name-status".
+
+ * The configuration file parser used for sizes (e.g. bigFileThreshold)
+   did not correctly interpret 'g' suffix.
+
+ * The replacement implemention for snprintf used on platforms with
+   native snprintf that is broken did not use va_copy correctly.
+
+ * LF-to-CRLF streaming filter replaced all LF with CRLF, which might
+   be techinically correct but not friendly to people who are trying
+   to recover from earlier mistakes of using CRLF in the repository
+   data in the first place. It now refrains from doing so for LF that
+   follows a CR.
+
+ * git native connection going over TCP (not over SSH) did not set
+   SO_KEEPALIVE option which failed to receive link layer errors.
+
+ * "git branch -m <current branch> HEAD" is an obvious no-op but was not
+   allowed.
+
+ * "git checkout -m" did not recreate the conflicted state in a "both
+   sides added, without any common ancestor version" conflict
+   situation.
+
+ * "git cherry-pick $commit" (not a range) created an unnecessary
+   sequencer state and interfered with valid workflow to use the
+   command during a session to cherry-pick multiple commits.
+
+ * You could make "git commit" segfault by giving the "--no-message"
+   option.
+
+ * "fast-import" did not correctly update an existing notes tree,
+   possibly corrupting the fan-out.
+
+ * "git fetch-pack" accepted unqualified refs that do not begin with
+   refs/ by mistake and compensated it by matching the refspec with
+   tail-match, which was doubly wrong. This broke fetching from a
+   repository with a funny named ref "refs/foo/refs/heads/master" and a
+   'master' branch with "git fetch-pack refs/heads/master", as the
+   command incorrectly considered the former a "match".
+
+ * "git log --follow" did not honor the rename threshold score given
+   with the -M option (e.g. "-M50%").
+
+ * "git mv" gave suboptimal error/warning messages when it overwrites
+   target files. It also did not pay attention to "-v" option.
+
+ * Authenticated "git push" over dumb HTTP were broken with a recent
+   change and failed without asking for password when username is
+   given.
+
+ * "git push" to an empty repository over HTTP were broken with a
+   recent change to the ref handling.
+
+ * "git push -v" forgot how to be verbose by mistake. It now properly
+   becomes verbose when asked to.
+
+ * When a "reword" action in "git rebase -i" failed to run "commit --amend",
+   we did not give the control back to the user to resolve the situation, and
+   instead kept the original commit log message.
+
+Also contains minor fixes and documentation updates.
diff --git a/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.3.txt b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.3.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..a92714c14b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.3.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+Git v1.7.8.3 Release Notes
+==========================
+
+Fixes since v1.7.8.2
+--------------------
+
+ * Attempt to fetch from an empty file pretending it to be a bundle did
+   not error out correctly.
+
+ * gitweb did not correctly fall back to configured $fallback_encoding
+   that is not 'latin1'.
+
+ * "git clone --depth $n" did not catch a non-number given as $n as an
+   error.
+
+Also contains minor fixes and documentation updates.
diff --git a/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.4.txt b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.4.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..9bebdbf13d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.4.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+Git v1.7.8.4 Release Notes
+==========================
+
+Fixes since v1.7.8.3
+--------------------
+
+ * The code to look up attributes for paths reused entries from a wrong
+   directory when two paths in question are in adjacent directories and
+   the name of the one directory is a prefix of the other.
+
+ * A wildcard that matches deeper hierarchy given to the "diff-index" command,
+   e.g. "git diff-index HEAD -- '*.txt'", incorrectly reported additions of
+   matching files even when there is no change.
+
+ * When producing a "thin pack" (primarily used in bundles and smart
+   HTTP transfers) out of a fully packed repository, we unnecessarily
+   avoided sending recent objects as a delta against objects we know
+   the other side has.
+
+ * "git send-email" did not properly treat sendemail.multiedit as a
+   boolean (e.g. setting it to "false" did not turn it off).
+
+Also contains minor fixes and documentation updates.
diff --git a/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.5.txt b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.5.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..011fd2a428
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.5.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+Git v1.7.8.5 Release Notes
+==========================
+
+Fixes since v1.7.8.4
+--------------------
+
+ * Dependency on our thread-utils.h header file was missing for
+   objects that depend on it in the Makefile.
+
+ * "git am" when fed an empty file did not correctly finish reading it
+   when it attempts to guess the input format.
+
+ * "git grep -P" (when PCRE is enabled in the build) did not match the
+   beginning and the end of the line correctly with ^ and $.
+
+ * "git rebase -m" tried to run "git notes copy" needlessly when
+   nothing was rewritten.
+
+Also contains minor fixes and documentation updates.
diff --git a/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.txt b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..b4d90bba0f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.8.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,161 @@
+Git v1.7.8 Release Notes
+========================
+
+Updates since v1.7.7
+--------------------
+
+ * Some git-svn, git-gui, git-p4 (in contrib) and msysgit updates.
+
+ * Updates to bash completion scripts.
+
+ * The build procedure has been taught to take advantage of computed
+   dependency automatically when the complier supports it.
+
+ * The date parser now accepts timezone designators that lack minutes
+   part and also has a colon between "hh:mm".
+
+ * The contents of the /etc/mailname file, if exists, is used as the
+   default value of the hostname part of the committer/author e-mail.
+
+ * "git am" learned how to read from patches generated by Hg.
+
+ * "git archive" talking with a remote repository can report errors
+   from the remote side in a more informative way.
+
+ * "git branch" learned an explicit --list option to ask for branches
+   listed, optionally with a glob matching pattern to limit its output.
+
+ * "git check-attr" learned "--cached" option to look at .gitattributes
+   files from the index, not from the working tree.
+
+ * Variants of "git cherry-pick" and "git revert" that take multiple
+   commits learned to "--continue" and "--abort".
+
+ * "git daemon" gives more human readble error messages to clients
+   using ERR packets when appropriate.
+
+ * Errors at the network layer is logged by "git daemon".
+
+ * "git diff" learned "--minimal" option to spend extra cycles to come
+   up with a minimal patch output.
+
+ * "git diff" learned "--function-context" option to show the whole
+   function as context that was affected by a change.
+
+ * "git difftool" can be told to skip launching the tool for a path by
+   answering 'n' to its prompt.
+
+ * "git fetch" learned to honor transfer.fsckobjects configuration to
+   validate the objects that were received from the other end, just like
+   "git receive-pack" (the receiving end of "git push") does.
+
+ * "git fetch" makes sure that the set of objects it received from the
+   other end actually completes the history before updating the refs.
+   "git receive-pack" (the receiving end of "git push") learned to do the
+   same.
+
+ * "git fetch" learned that fetching/cloning from a regular file on the
+   filesystem is not necessarily a request to unpack a bundle file; the
+   file could be ".git" with "gitdir: <path>" in it.
+
+ * "git for-each-ref" learned "%(contents:subject)", "%(contents:body)"
+   and "%(contents:signature)". The last one is useful for signed tags.
+
+ * "git grep" used to incorrectly pay attention to .gitignore files
+   scattered in the directory it was working in even when "--no-index"
+   option was used. It no longer does this. The "--exclude-standard"
+   option needs to be given to explicitly activate the ignore
+   mechanism.
+
+ * "git grep" learned "--untracked" option, where given patterns are
+    searched in untracked (but not ignored) files as well as tracked
+    files in the working tree, so that matches in new but not yet
+    added files do not get missed.
+
+ * The recursive merge backend no longer looks for meaningless
+   existing merges in submodules unless in the outermost merge.
+
+ * "git log" and friends learned "--children" option.
+
+ * "git ls-remote" learned to respond to "-h"(elp) requests.
+
+ * "mediawiki" remote helper can interact with (surprise!) MediaWiki
+   with "git fetch" & "git push".
+
+ * "git merge" learned the "--edit" option to allow users to edit the
+   merge commit log message.
+
+ * "git rebase -i" can be told to use special purpose editor suitable
+   only for its insn sheet via sequence.editor configuration variable.
+
+ * "git send-email" learned to respond to "-h"(elp) requests.
+
+ * "git send-email" allows the value given to sendemail.aliasfile to begin
+   with "~/" to refer to the $HOME directory.
+
+ * "git send-email" forces use of Authen::SASL::Perl to work around
+   issues between Authen::SASL::Cyrus and AUTH PLAIN/LOGIN.
+
+ * "git stash" learned "--include-untracked" option to stash away
+   untracked/ignored cruft from the working tree.
+
+ * "git submodule clone" does not leak an error message to the UI
+   level unnecessarily anymore.
+
+ * "git submodule update" learned to honor "none" as the value for
+   submodule.<name>.update to specify that the named submodule should
+   not be checked out by default.
+
+ * When populating a new submodule directory with "git submodule init",
+   the $GIT_DIR metainformation directory for submodules is created inside
+   $GIT_DIR/modules/<name>/ directory of the superproject and referenced
+   via the gitfile mechanism. This is to make it possible to switch
+   between commits in the superproject that has and does not have the
+   submodule in the tree without re-cloning.
+
+ * "gitweb" leaked unescaped control characters from syntax hiliter
+   outputs.
+
+ * "gitweb" can be told to give custom string at the end of the HTML
+   HEAD element.
+
+ * "gitweb" now has its own manual pages.
+
+
+Also contains other documentation updates and minor code cleanups.
+
+
+Fixes since v1.7.7
+------------------
+
+Unless otherwise noted, all fixes in the 1.7.7.X maintenance track are
+included in this release.
+
+ * HTTP transport did not use pushurl correctly, and also did not tell
+   what host it is trying to authenticate with when asking for
+   credentials.
+   (merge deba493 jk/http-auth later to maint).
+
+ * "git blame" was aborted if started from an uncommitted content and
+   the path had the textconv filter in effect.
+   (merge 8518088 ss/blame-textconv-fake-working-tree later to maint).
+
+ * Adding many refs to the local repository in one go (e.g. "git fetch"
+   that fetches many tags) and looking up a ref by name in a repository
+   with too many refs were unnecessarily slow.
+   (merge 17d68a54d jp/get-ref-dir-unsorted later to maint).
+
+ * Report from "git commit" on untracked files was confused under
+   core.ignorecase option.
+   (merge 395c7356 jk/name-hash-dirent later to maint).
+
+ * "git merge" did not understand ":/<pattern>" as a way to name a commit.
+
+ " "git push" on the receiving end used to call post-receive and post-update
+   hooks for attempted removal of non-existing refs.
+   (merge 160b81ed ph/push-to-delete-nothing later to maint).
+
+ * Help text for "git remote set-url" and "git remote set-branches"
+   were misspelled.
+   (merge c49904e fc/remote-seturl-usage-fix later to maint).
+   (merge 656cdf0 jc/remote-setbranches-usage-fix later to maint).
diff --git a/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.1.txt b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.1.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..6957183dbb
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.1.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,63 @@
+Git v1.7.9.1 Release Notes
+==========================
+
+Fixes since v1.7.9
+------------------
+
+ * The makefile allowed environment variable X seep into it result in
+   command names suffixed with unnecessary strings.
+
+ * The set of included header files in compat/inet-{ntop,pton}
+   wrappers was updated for Windows some time ago, but in a way that
+   broke Solaris build.
+
+ * rpmbuild noticed an unpackaged but installed *.mo file and failed.
+
+ * Subprocesses spawned from various git programs were often left running
+   to completion even when the top-level process was killed.
+
+ * "git add -e" learned not to show a diff for an otherwise unmodified
+   submodule that only has uncommitted local changes in the patch
+   prepared by for the user to edit.
+
+ * Typo in "git branch --edit-description my-tpoic" was not diagnosed.
+
+ * Using "git grep -l/-L" together with options -W or --break may not
+   make much sense as the output is to only count the number of hits
+   and there is no place for file breaks, but the latter options made
+   "-l/-L" to miscount the hits.
+
+ * "git log --first-parent $pathspec" did not stay on the first parent
+   chain and veered into side branch from which the whole change to the
+   specified paths came.
+
+ * "git merge --no-edit $tag" failed to honor the --no-edit option.
+
+ * "git merge --ff-only $tag" failed because it cannot record the
+   required mergetag without creating a merge, but this is so common
+   operation for branch that is used _only_ to follow the upstream, so
+   it was changed to allow fast-forwarding without recording the mergetag.
+
+ * "git mergetool" now gives an empty file as the common base version
+   to the backend when dealing with the "both sides added, differently"
+   case.
+
+ * "git push -q" was not sufficiently quiet.
+
+ * When "git push" fails to update any refs, the client side did not
+   report an error correctly to the end user.
+
+ * "rebase" and "commit --amend" failed to work on commits with ancient
+   timestamps near year 1970.
+
+ * When asking for a tag to be pulled, "request-pull" did not show the
+   name of the tag prefixed with "tags/", which would have helped older
+   clients.
+
+ * "git submodule add $path" forgot to recompute the name to be stored
+   in .gitmodules when the submodule at $path was once added to the
+   superproject and already initialized.
+
+ * Many small corner case bugs on "git tag -n" was corrected.
+
+Also contains minor fixes and documentation updates.
diff --git a/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.2.txt b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.2.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..e500da75dd
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.2.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
+Git v1.7.9.2 Release Notes
+==========================
+
+Fixes since v1.7.9.1
+--------------------
+
+ * Bash completion script (in contrib/) did not like a pattern that
+   begins with a dash to be passed to __git_ps1 helper function.
+
+ * Adaptation of the bash completion script (in contrib/) for zsh
+   incorrectly listed all subcommands when "git <TAB><TAB>" was given
+   to ask for list of porcelain subcommands.
+
+ * The build procedure for profile-directed optimized binary was not
+   working very well.
+
+ * Some systems need to explicitly link -lcharset to get locale_charset().
+
+ * t5541 ignored user-supplied port number used for HTTP server testing.
+
+ * The error message emitted when we see an empty loose object was
+   not phrased correctly.
+
+ * The code to ask for password did not fall back to the terminal
+   input when GIT_ASKPASS is set but does not work (e.g. lack of X
+   with GUI askpass helper).
+
+ * We failed to give the true terminal width to any subcommand when
+   they are invoked with the pager, i.e. "git -p cmd".
+
+ * map_user() was not rewriting its output correctly, which resulted
+   in the user visible symptom that "git blame -e" sometimes showed
+   excess '>' at the end of email addresses.
+
+ * "git checkout -b" did not allow switching out of an unborn branch.
+
+ * When you have both .../foo and .../foo.git, "git clone .../foo" did not
+   favor the former but the latter.
+
+ * "git commit" refused to create a commit when entries added with
+   "add -N" remained in the index, without telling Git what their content
+   in the next commit should be. We should have created the commit without
+   these paths.
+
+ * "git diff --stat" said "files", "insertions", and "deletions" even
+   when it is showing one "file", one "insertion" or one "deletion".
+
+ * The output from "git diff --stat" for two paths that have the same
+   amount of changes showed graph bars of different length due to the
+   way we handled rounding errors.
+
+ * "git grep" did not pay attention to -diff (hence -binary) attribute.
+
+ * The transport programs (fetch, push, clone)ignored --no-progress
+   and showed progress when sending their output to a terminal.
+
+ * Sometimes error status detected by a check in an earlier phase of
+   "git receive-pack" (the other end of "git push") was lost by later
+   checks, resulting in false indication of success.
+
+ * "git rev-list --verify" sometimes skipped verification depending on
+   the phase of the moon, which dates back to 1.7.8.x series.
+
+ * Search box in "gitweb" did not accept non-ASCII characters correctly.
+
+ * Search interface of "gitweb" did not show multiple matches in the same file
+   correctly.
+
+Also contains minor fixes and documentation updates.
diff --git a/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.3.txt b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.3.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..91c65012f9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.3.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+Git v1.7.9.3 Release Notes
+==========================
+
+Fixes since v1.7.9.2
+--------------------
+
+ * "git p4" (in contrib/) submit the changes to a wrong place when the
+   "--use-client-spec" option is set.
+
+ * The config.mak.autogen generated by optional autoconf support tried
+   to link the binary with -lintl even when libintl.h is missing from
+   the system.
+
+ * When the filter driver exits before reading the content before the
+   main git process writes the contents to be filtered to the pipe to
+   it, the latter could be killed with SIGPIPE instead of ignoring
+   such an event as an error.
+
+ * "git add --refresh <pathspec>" used to warn about unmerged paths
+   outside the given pathspec.
+
+ * The bulk check-in codepath in "git add" streamed contents that
+   needs smudge/clean filters without running them, instead of punting
+   and delegating to the codepath to run filters after slurping
+   everything to core.
+
+ * "git branch --with $that" assumed incorrectly that the user will never
+   ask the question with nonsense value in $that.
+
+ * "git bundle create" produced a corrupt bundle file upon seeing
+   commits with excessively long subject line.
+
+ * When a remote helper exits before reading the blank line from the
+   main git process to signal the end of commands, the latter could be
+   killed with SIGPIPE. Instead we should ignore such event as a
+   non-error.
+
+ * The commit log template given with "git merge --edit" did not have
+   a short instructive text like what "git commit" gives.
+
+ * "git rev-list --verify-objects -q" omitted the extra verification
+   it needs to do over "git rev-list --objects -q" by mistake.
+
+ * "gitweb" used to drop warnings in the log file when "heads" view is
+   accessed in a repository whose HEAD does not point at a valid
+   branch.
+
+ * An invalid regular expression pattern given by an end user made
+   "gitweb" to return garbled response.
+
+Also contains minor fixes and documentation updates.
diff --git a/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.4.txt b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.4.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..e5217a1889
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.4.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+Git v1.7.9.4 Release Notes
+==========================
+
+Fixes since v1.7.9.3
+--------------------
+
+ * The code to synthesize the fake ancestor tree used by 3-way merge
+   fallback in "git am" was not prepared to read a patch created with
+   a non-standard -p<num> value.
+
+ * "git bundle" did not record boundary commits correctly when there
+   are many of them.
+
+ * "git diff-index" and its friends at the plumbing level showed the
+   "diff --git" header and nothing else for a path whose cached stat
+   info is dirty without actual difference when asked to produce a
+   patch. This was a longstanding bug that we could have fixed long
+   time ago.
+
+ * "gitweb" did use quotemeta() to prepare search string when asked to
+   do a fixed-string project search, but did not use it by mistake and
+   used the user-supplied string instead.
+
+Also contains minor fixes and documentation updates.
diff --git a/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.txt b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..95320aad5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/RelNotes/1.7.9.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,112 @@
+Git v1.7.9 Release Notes
+========================
+
+Updates since v1.7.8
+--------------------
+
+ * gitk updates accumulated since early 2011.
+
+ * git-gui updated to 0.16.0.
+
+ * git-p4 (in contrib/) updates.
+
+ * Git uses gettext to translate its most common interface messages
+   into the user's language if translations are available and the
+   locale is appropriately set. Distributors can drop new PO files
+   in po/ to add new translations.
+
+ * The code to handle username/password for HTTP transactions used in
+   "git push" & "git fetch" learned to talk "credential API" to
+   external programs to cache or store them, to allow integration with
+   platform native keychain mechanisms.
+
+ * The input prompts in the terminal use our own getpass() replacement
+   when possible. HTTP transactions used to ask for the username without
+   echoing back what was typed, but with this change you will see it as
+   you type.
+
+ * The internals of "revert/cherry-pick" have been tweaked to prepare
+   building more generic "sequencer" on top of the implementation that
+   drives them.
+
+ * "git rev-parse FETCH_HEAD" after "git fetch" without specifying
+   what to fetch from the command line will now show the commit that
+   would be merged if the command were "git pull".
+
+ * "git add" learned to stream large files directly into a packfile
+   instead of writing them into individual loose object files.
+
+ * "git checkout -B <current branch> <elsewhere>" is a more intuitive
+   way to spell "git reset --keep <elsewhere>".
+
+ * "git checkout" and "git merge" learned "--no-overwrite-ignore" option
+   to tell Git that untracked and ignored files are not expendable.
+
+ * "git commit --amend" learned "--no-edit" option to say that the
+   user is amending the tree being recorded, without updating the
+   commit log message.
+
+ * "git commit" and "git reset" re-learned the optimization to prime
+   the cache-tree information in the index, which makes it faster to
+   write a tree object out after the index entries are updated.
+
+ * "git commit" detects and rejects an attempt to stuff NUL byte in
+   the commit log message.
+
+ * "git commit" learned "-S" to GPG-sign the commit; this can be shown
+   with the "--show-signature" option to "git log".
+
+ * fsck and prune are relatively lengthy operations that still go
+   silent while making the end-user wait. They learned to give progress
+   output like other slow operations.
+
+ * The set of built-in function-header patterns for various languages
+   knows MATLAB.
+
+ * "git log --format='<format>'" learned new %g[nNeE] specifiers to
+   show information from the reflog entries when walking the reflog
+   (i.e. with "-g").
+
+ * "git pull" can be used to fetch and merge an annotated/signed tag,
+   instead of the tip of a topic branch. The GPG signature from the
+   signed tag is recorded in the resulting merge commit for later
+   auditing.
+
+ * "git log" learned "--show-signature" option to show the signed tag
+   that was merged that is embedded in the merge commit. It also can
+   show the signature made on the commit with "git commit -S".
+
+ * "git branch --edit-description" can be used to add descriptive text
+   to explain what a topic branch is about.
+
+ * "git fmt-merge-msg" learned to take the branch description into
+   account when preparing a merge summary that "git merge" records
+   when merging a local branch.
+
+ * "git request-pull" has been updated to convey more information
+   useful for integrators to decide if a topic is worth merging and
+   what is pulled is indeed what the requestor asked to pull,
+   including:
+
+   - the tip of the branch being requested to be merged;
+   - the branch description describing what the topic is about;
+   - the contents of the annotated tag, when requesting to pull a tag.
+
+ * "git pull" learned to notice 'pull.rebase' configuration variable,
+   which serves as a global fallback for setting 'branch.<name>.rebase'
+   configuration variable per branch.
+
+ * "git tag" learned "--cleanup" option to control how the whitespaces
+   and empty lines in tag message are cleaned up.
+
+ * "gitweb" learned to show side-by-side diff.
+
+Also contains minor documentation updates and code clean-ups.
+
+
+Fixes since v1.7.8
+------------------
+
+Unless otherwise noted, all the fixes since v1.7.8 in the maintenance
+releases are contained in this release (see release notes to them for
+details).