Git 1.7.9-rc0 and 1.7.8.3

I just tagged Git 1.7.9-rc0, which is the zeroth release candidate in the sense that it is supposed to be almost feature complete and marks the beginning of feature freeze.

We have achieved quite a lot during this cycle. All the new things that we initially listed that we want to have are in it:

• 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; and
• Better large-contents support.

Even though we didn't originally plan to, this also includes support for signed commits as a part of the first topic in the above list.


I also tagged 1.7.8.3 from the tip of the maintenance track. The fixes in this maintenance release are all included in 1.7.9-rc0 release.