Moving forward to 1.7.9

A handful topics that have been cooking on the 'next' branch have now been graduated to the 'master' branch, to be included in the upcoming Git 1.7.9 release. They are all relatively minor fixes and a small feature or two, except for one, which is to stream large files directly to a packfile upon "git add", instead of storing them individually in loose object files and having to later repack them into a single pack, which would doubly be time consuming.

As I wrote earlier, we expect to make Git 1.7.9 a fairly focused release with only small number of new features around high impact themes:

• Better and more auditable communication in pull based workflow by supporting electronically signed pull requests that records more meaningful branch description;
• More pleasant end-user experience by providing credential helper API to allow platform native keychain implementations to supply authentication material during "git push" and "git pull";
• i18n of messages out of the end-user facing programs;
• Better large-contents support.

The "'git add' that streams to pack" in tonight's pushout is about the last theme; there is another topic regarding the same theme already in development, but it is not expected to be complete during the 1.7.9 timeframe.

Of course, there are other miscelaneous features and fixes already in the 'master' branch and also still in flight and cooking in the 'next' branch, but as far as the big changes are concerned, we are about 80% feature complete as of tonight. The credential API is expected to hit the 'master' branch in a few days.