Version 2.6 of Git has been released. This new edition includes many new capabilities, functions and bug fixes. It also lays the foundation for major changes to the platform, and completely rewrites the “git pull” function in C.
Future versions of Git are destined to allow multiple types of “back ends,” and in preparation for this, the amount of direct file-system access to reference-like commands has been reduced. Memory use was also curbed for the commit-slab functionality.
(Related: What was added to the previous version of Git)
And that was a component of the major theme in this release: cleaning up and speeding up. Performing multi-tree merges, for example, will also repopulate the cache-tree so that when a merge is complete, status checks and commits will go a lot faster. This logic used to exist in “Git checkout,” but will likely be removed in future versions.
More changes in this version include lazy caching in the gitmodules API, the “lockfile” API being rebuilt on top of a new “tempfile” API, and cleanups around Git clone functionality.
Git 2.6 is available now.
